


Hatari

by KinoGlowWorm



Series: Transference [5]
Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Body Sharing, Class Issues, Cluster Feels, Cooking, Drunk Sex, F/M, Family Angst, M/M, Martial Arts, Multi, Pregnancy, Queer Themes, Science, Smut, Storytelling, Tea, Teaching, Travel, Unplanned Pregnancy, kicking ass and buying vegetables, mention of past forced institutionalization, post-Season 1, taekwondo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-04-28 00:39:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 91,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5071222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KinoGlowWorm/pseuds/KinoGlowWorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot of Post-Season 1 speculation as characters readjust to what everyday life means (and to what degree it is possible) on the other side of their sensate awakening, and how it changes the way they view their past, their future, and themselves.</p><p>Several threads twine together:<br/>Sun adjusts to life in Nairobi with Capheus and his mother after escaping from prison.<br/>Wolfgang and Felix hide out in Russia with Wolfgang's aunt.<br/>Lito comes to Mumbai to film a movie.<br/>Kala works to find a way to free Will from his mental intrusions.</p><p>Also, there's tea.</p><p>(Since this needs a smut tag now, smutty content is currently limited to Ch. 10, 17 and 24 so you can skip it or skip to it as you see fit)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Shiro’s face still hadn’t entirely recovered, but Sun could see decades of practice taking over as she busied herself finishing what needed to be done regardless of how she felt or what else was going on around her. Fundamentally, it was a kind of toughness that Sun understood; she just wasn’t accustomed to seeing it applied to vegetables."

The woven plastic sack dug a groove into Sun’s shoulder as she followed Shiro through the crowded labyrinth that was Wakulima Market. Stacked row upon row, the produce almost ceased to seem real and more like some kind of abstract mosaic of color and light. As Capheus, Shiro, and every person to whom they had mentioned that it was her first time visiting the market had reminded her, this was the largest produce market not only in Kenya, but in several surrounding countries as well. Between the colors and the light and the cacophony of voices swirling around her, Sun felt her focus trying to pull in several directions at once. She was almost glad for the weight on her shoulder, a single thing demanding focus exactly where she was. 

She followed the falls of Shiro’s sneakers on the concrete below the swaying hem of her skirt, and had just sidestepped a puddle when she saw the hand delicately snake into the much lighter bag Shiro carried and back out carrying a slim wallet. Sun didn’t hesitate before dropping the bag of produce behind her and grabbing the arm, pulling roughly back and slamming a knee into the back.

The wallet went flying as the tall figure doubled forward, then tried to leverage out of her grasp. Sun twisted his arm in tightly, rolled her body up against his back and flipped him over her onto the concrete, splashing against the cloudy water on the floor among the vegetables that had rolled out of Sun’s bag. Slightly dazed, he rolled to the side and tried to stand up, but Sun’s foot whipped around to connect with his head before he made it off his knees. As he fell backwards, Sun was on him and punching his already bloodied face. She realized, moments later, that he was no longer attempting to escape or fight back. 

Sun sat back on her knees, slowly gaining awareness of her surroundings again: the ring of silence that had formed around her, cutting through the chaos of the place. Her eyes flicked around her as people began to whisper, looking back at her. She looked up at Shiro, her brow furrowed and her mouth open in shock.

A sickening feeling began to settle in Sun’s stomach and a different sort of heat coursed through her body. She looked at the still figure beneath her, her eyes tracking to his chest to make sure it still rose and fell. As she stood up slowly, her eyes returned to Shiro’s pained face, then looked away.

“You remember there was nothing in that wallet,” Shiro reminded her in whisper, and then Sun remembered her explaining the ritual of the second wallet filled with newspaper cut to the size of banknotes as they had prepared to leave. The one with real cash was tucked securely in the waistband of her skirt. The sickening weight in her stomach flooded her system as she looked back to where the man still lay, unconscious and untouched in ripped clothing, a thin stream of blood leaking out of his nose.

In that look she felt her own mother’s eyes looking through at her and she was nine years old again, her mother picking her up from school in the middle of the day after she’d been sent home for knocking another girl in her class to the ground outside. She couldn’t even remember now what the girl had said that had made her so angry, just the weight of her mother’s disappointment as they walked away from the school.

“We all hit too hard sometimes; it happens,” Wolfgang shrugged as she noticed him beside her, arms folded against his chest as he surveyed the situation. He stepped over and crouched next to the figure on the ground, patting the man’s cheek until his eyes slid open again. Sun watched as his dazed eyes readjusted to his surroundings, then came to focus on the face looking down at him. His eyes leapt open and he scrabbled backwards into a bag of carrots before making it to his feet and limping off as quickly as he could in the other direction.

“He’ll be fine,” he continued casually, stooping and beginning to collect the vegetables that had scattered when Sun had dropped the bag. She crouched down to join him and Shiro followed suit, all packing the yams, onions, and heavy greens back into the sack in uneven silence. The business of the market began to close over the hole they’d created. People began to flow around them again like a rock in a stream. A large bag of cornmeal had split and scattered across the hard floor. Trails of footprints already led out of the spill in both directions as people tracked straight through it.

Wolfgang was probably right, she thought; the would-be pickpocket probably would be fine. It wasn’t as reassuring a thought as she would have liked. 

Shiro’s face still hadn’t entirely recovered, but Sun could see decades of practice taking over as she busied herself finishing what needed to be done regardless of how she felt or what else was going on around her. Fundamentally, it was a kind of toughness that Sun understood; she just wasn’t accustomed to seeing it applied to vegetables.

The salvageable produce back in the bag, they stood up, still without a word. Wolfgang handed the bag back over to Sun, then stepped back and away. She hefted the back over her shoulder, settling back into the groove it had been digging before this began.

They walked out of the main market, still silent. Sun tried to avoid stepping in the spilled cornmeal, but found it impossible to completely sidestep all the places it had already been tracked. Traces of it followed them all the way out, all the way where they were to meet the bus.

As they stood outside, waiting for Capheus to meet them along his route, Sun let the bag rest on the ground in front of her. She folded her arms tightly against her chest.

“When Capheus first told me about you he said you were like Van Damme,” Shiro began softly. “I wasn’t sure what he meant at the time. I thought of Lionheart, that movie he’s watched I don’t know how many times. I thought that’s what he might mean: that you had a fierce strength of heart.”

“You do know that movie’s about an underground boxing ring,” Sun interjected, though she hadn’t actually seen but a few minutes of it.

“When have I ever sat through all of one of those movies of his?” Shiro sighed and leaned back against the concrete post jutting out of the ground beside her.

“Me either,” Sun replied, a soft laugh escaping from between the weights still sitting in her stomach, though it was only half-true. Shiro joined her, her eyes crinkling as she chuckled under her breath.

“It probably applies better to you anyhow,” Shiro went on. “Anyone who knows about lions knows that it’s the she-lions that do most of the real work. Most of what their men do is just fluffing up their manes, posing impressively, and fighting with each other.”

“He’ll be fine, you know,” Sun offered after another moment of silence, still working to convince herself of it.

“I know,” Shiro replied evenly. “I’ve seen people get up from worse, child. I just wasn’t expecting it from you.”

Sun scuffed rocks along the pavement and her eyes fell across the street on one of the orange-breasted starlings that lived liked they owned the city. The bird was bathing in water that had pooled around a crack in the street, flapping and dipping with the halting, beady-eyed intensity birds brought to everything but flight. 

A new wave of frustration, quieter this time, flowed through Sun as she struggled to piece together words to fix what she had broken, but she couldn’t quite name even that. She had gotten the sense that Shiro was careful to hide any negativity she had until she could reabsorb and transform it. The closest she had seen was in some of the ridiculous stories she had told her over tea about things she had seen and that people had said to her when she had been cleaning houses. But even those were presented more as comedy than outrage. 

The jaw-dropped look of shock wouldn’t leave her mind. It had been the closest thing to a negative reaction she had seen from her. Especially with her Lionheart comments from a moment ago, Sun felt like Shiro was already trying to strain a positive light to shine on it. Somehow that made Sun feel more guilty about the whole thing.

“It’s okay,” she said apologetically and Shiro looked at her puzzledly. “I mean, it’s okay if you’re angry,” she continued. “With me.” Shiro sighed and looked at the ground.

Sun stared back at the bird in its puddle, still trying to catch looks at Shiro out of the corner of her eye. A second bird had joined the first. They flapped and puffed at each other briefly, then went about their business of washing again.

“I’m not angry, child. It is a gift you have. I can think of a number of times I would have liked to be able to fight like that. It was just surprising,” Shiro replied, shifting her weight against the post. The feel of the words in Sun’s mouth withered her tongue like an underripe persimmon. She bit her lip, trying to find new words to break up the heaviness sitting in her stomach.

“I overreacted. I’m sorry,” she finally said.

“What are you sorry for?” Shiro asked. “You just wanted to help.”

Sun was taken off guard as her apology volleyed back at her. She couldn’t tell if Shiro was aware that a response like that stung, too. She didn’t think so, but couldn’t approach any way to let her know that. She wished for some way to explain it, and felt the stack of things she couldn’t do grow a small measure heavier. 

It had been growing since she arrived, around the edges of the warmth and comfort she’d been offered here. Because of it, in some ways. 

There wasn’t - or, at least, there hadn’t been - much Sun did in which she didn’t feel confident in her mastery. Before it all fell apart at home, Sun had taken pride in being very good at the work she did in her family’s company. She had accepted and gotten over the fact that her work would rarely be recognized by anyone above her, but she saw its effect both in the company’s performance and in the people below her that came to her first. That competence was its own kind of satisfaction. 

Fighting was similar. Even if she didn’t win every match, she still felt as though her hard work was paired with a sort of mastery that was difficult to call into question.

Up until the day her brother had visited the prison to inform her of her father’s passing, she had felt more or less independently in control of the various spheres of her life. Even her decision to take the fall for her family and go to prison had felt safely under her control.

Since her arrival here, though, she had been inundated with the details of day to day life that had been taking place in the periphery of her awareness like the low, persistent hum of a speaker that you eventually filter from your notice. She knew she paid a woman to clean her apartment and take care of her laundry twice a week - her name was Young-sook, or was it Myung-sook? - but she wasn’t really clear what it was that she did. Sun had never really had to think about it. 

At home with Shiro, though, as she was most days, that was was the basic shape of it: folding, straightening, wiping, scrubbing, washing, cooking. That and drinking tea, stopping to chat with the neighbors, although that had dried up since they had moved last weekend. It was just the two of them and the tea during the day now. Outside of the tea drinking, none of the work was anywhere near Sun’s areas of mastery. Especially when compared with Shiro, who, it seemed, could flick a shirt into the air and have it land perfectly folded, she felt clumsy in a way she hadn’t since she was a child.

Even though Shiro had laughed off any surprise at Sun’s lack of experience in basic household tasks and shown patience in demonstrating them, Sun still couldn’t make it sit well with herself. 

And now it seemed to be bleeding even into areas of her expertise. Apparently, now she couldn’t even fight someone - and win - without feeling out of her depth.

Sun kicked one of the rocks she had been pushing around on the ground in front of her and it skittered across the road, splashing into the puddle where the two starlings had been bathing. They fluttered into the air with a startled chirrup, settling on a roofline a little farther away.

Sun realized after a moment that Shiro was looking at her, a look of quiet contentment on her face. “Thank you for coming with me to the market,” she said. “There was a time I could carry as much as all that. These days, I’m worn out enough just by walking around from stall to stall. With Capheus working so much, we’ve been left to depend on others to help deliver produce.”

Sun was relieved that the silence had broken and exhaled deeply. “Thank you,” she said. “Er, you’re welcome.”

“That son of mine works so hard on that bus,” Shiro said and Sun nodded in agreement. She hadn’t appreciated how much time Capheus spent working until she saw it for herself. She thought she had worked long hours back in Seoul - and she had, compared to her coworkers - but Capheus’s hours made her exhausted just thinking about them. 

“I’d say it was too much, but he’s like us: he does what he has to do, ” Shiro added and Sun nodded again.

“I don’t know if I actually see him any more now that we live together,” she said.

“Oh, you see him when it counts,” Shiro cackled conspiratorily and Sun felt herself blushing all the way to her ears. The new apartment in Ruaka had two bedrooms, but almost two and a half weeks living in a single room in Kibera had left no question as to the nature of the relationship. Shiro hadn’t before addressed it as such, though it seemed that Capheus’s assurances that she wouldn’t have a problem with it if she knew were playing out as he said, even if his assurances that Shiro was asleep at the time apparently weren’t.

Sun looked down the street, shielding her eyes against the bright sun of late morning, hoping to see the Van Damn coming towards them. The sting of her unrequited apology and the cold, jagged weight of the guilt that had followed it had both begun to fade, but had not yet disappeared completely. 

As her eyes searched the road in front of her, she heard a horn behind her and whipped around to see Capheus leaning out the window behind her. He smiled as their eyes made contact and the tension in her stomach released just a little bit more. Jela hopped down to help Shiro step up to the seats, where a small handful of passengers waited.

Sun swung the bag up and over her shoulder again and marched it all onto the van, leaving the market behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those readers who read early drafts of these when I was feeling stuck. These are better because of you.


	2. Tea in a Saucepan and Other Horrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sun leaned into the fragrant steam, closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose. She was suddenly overcome with a sort of soothing sense of familiarity at the scent. The thought hit her awareness as she caught herself smiling softly. She looked up and saw Kala wearing much the same expression."

Sun still hadn’t gotten over the idea of making tea in a saucepan. 

She leaned against the wall of the apartment’s tiny kitchen with her arms tightly folded against her chest and looked out the window down into the drab gravel and concrete below.

“How much longer until they return?” Kala asked gently. 

“Depends. Forty minutes, minimum. Shiro hasn’t been back to the old neighborhood since we moved last week. Even though a number of people are coming back here for tea, I suspect there will be a lot of catching up there. A lot of the older folks have phones, but don’t really think to use them. ” Sun said drily, adding, “And that’s not even touching on traffic.”

Kala’s laugh tickled the air. “You talk like you’ve been a local for years already!”

Sun winced apologetically at the comment.

“Do you have a rolling pin?” Kala asked as she picked through the supplies still partly in boxes on the floor. Sun returned her attention to the kitchen, squatting to join Kala in the search.

“Shiro does. I think it might be in this drawer,” Sun answered, sliding a drawer open, then another when she didn’t find it on the first try. Kala grabbed it and placed it on the tiny patch of counter next to the range along with an assortment of small bags of spices. She began shaking out spices into her hand with a practiced eye and dropping each palmful into a paper bag.

“How is it going with…” Kala pursed her lips and opened and closed her mouth a few times before uncertainly finishing her question, “everything?”

Sun inhaled through her nose, leaned back against the wall and threw her gaze back out the window, where a lone child was now busily juggling a soccer ball.

“That was the wrong question, I’m sorry.” Kala busied her focus in preparing the spices for the tea. She folded the top of the bag once and placed it on the counter. 

“Do you want to crush the spices? You look like you could do well to hit something right now,” Kala offered with an apologetic smirk, holding out the rolling pin.

Sun quietly snorted a single, telling laugh and accepted the pin. 

“What exactly do I need to do here?” Sun asked, looking at the rolling pin in her hand like a foreign object.

“Well, with this kind of rolling pin, you can either whack the bag with the long side of it or pound with the end. Or both. Whatever feels right. The spices don’t need to be completely ground up, just cracked enough to release their flavor,” Kala demonstrated after a fashion: clapping the side of one hand against her open palm, then pounding the palm with fist.

Sun gave the bag one cursory whack with the broad side of the pin. She frowned at the bag and gave it several more short, sharp, one-handed blows. She pinned the folded edge of the bag with her left hand and started pounding down along the bag in quick succession. The spices threatened to push through the paper of the bag against the force of it. The rich smells of cardamom and cinnamon began to scent the air. Sun stepped back from the counter.

“Is that alright?” she asked, raising her eyebrow to Kala, holding the rolling pin loosely at her side.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” waved Kala, dumping the crushed spices into the saucepan and pouring several successive cups of water over them. She set the burner on a low flame and leaned back against the square of counter next to the stove.

Kala chewed her lip, and Sun could feel her grasping at threads to construct a viable question to break the silence. 

Sun tried to clear the wash of images in her mind, but instead pulled both of them into a very specific memory from when she was five years old. She was in the kitchen with her mother, wearing the special pink and green hanbok she had only worn once to her uncle’s wedding. As her mother bustled anxiously, making sure all the tea supplies were in place, Sun leaned her weight on the heavy wooden door to push it open just a crack. She peered through to watch her father and her grandparents - his parents - sitting around the table, speaking in dry, politely lukewarm tones. Under the table, a toddling Jung-ki clung to his father’s leg. 

“Sun, come carry this plate of sweets,” her mother beckoned in a loud whisper, holding out a pale green ceramic platter heavy with dasik and sweet-stuffed tteok, elegantly dotted with pale chrysanthemum blossoms. Sun eased the door closed and padded over dutifully, accepting the dish carefully with both hands. She watched her mother take a deep breath slowly in and then push it out forcefully before picking up the tea tray and a neutrally pleasant smile.

As they passed through the door into the dining room, the conversation of Sun’s father and grandparents continued unabated, even as her mother set the tea on the table in front of them. Jung-ki turned to look at the door and saw Sun’s tray, right at eye-level. He let go of his father’s leg and beelined for Sun, his stubby hands reaching up for the sweets almost immediately. She stiffened and raised the tray up above her head as she saw her brother barreling at her. 

He lost his balance as he came up near to her, trying to reach even higher towards his goal, instead tripping forward into her. With the tray above her head and occupying her hands, Sun’s center of balance was off enough that all three went clattering to the floor. The tray smashed as it hit the wooden floor, scattering pastries and pieces of broken pottery together. Sun sat up, somewhere between dazed and horrified as she noticed the four adults staring at her with expressions ranging from horror to contempt. They didn’t see Jung-ki crawl over to a pale green dasik and begin sucking at it greedily. A flush rose into her face and her hearing melted into a buzz as she wished to be a crumb slipping between the floorboards. Unable to hear the words, she watched the attention turn from her towards her mother, her grandmother’s sneer in particular. Sun stood up and ran back into the kitchen.

From her perch in her kitchen in Nairobi, Sun doubled forward as she revisited the near nausea of that moment. She thought of the look on her mother’s face, not just the one following the crash, but the one she’d had just before leaving the kitchen as well. 

She hadn’t noticed Kala get up until she felt the hand on her shoulder. Kala’s eyes were rimmed red with Sun’s tears. She tried to avert her eyes back to the simmering spices on the stove, but turned back and let Kala embrace her.

“But Shiro would never…” Kala trailed off, confident but still shaken.

“No, she wouldn’t,” Sun agreed dourly, pulling back and turning her attention outside again. “I just, I worry sometimes that I’m not what she imagined when she pictured her son’s partner. Or whatever it is that I am.”

“Do you mean because you’re from so far away?” 

“No, I don’t think it’s that. She’s always quite interested to hear anything about Korea. It’s a different kind of distance. I’m not good at the things she does. I’ve always had a housekeeper of some sort to take care of those kinds of tasks. Shiro worked as a housekeeper when she first came to Nairobi. It’s like I’m a child trying to help.” Sun held up her left hand to display the bandages on the first two fingers. “I managed to cut two of my fingers trying to help slice greens for dinner the other night.”

Kala pressed her lips together tightly and breathed deeply through her nose.

“You’re trying not to laugh about my fingers, aren’t you,” Sun frowned.

“I’m sorry,” Kala began to laugh audibly through her nose, her lips curling as they tried to contain her laughter as she slid down to where she had sat before on the box. “I’m so sorry; I’m not helping, I know.”

Sun rolled her eyes, but chuckled under her breath as well. She stepped over to the pot, steaming gently on the stove, leaning over and looking down into it.

“Should I stir it?” She asked cautiously.

“You can if you like,” Kala said. “We should add the milk soon. The aromatic compounds in the spices dissolve better in fat, so simmering the spices with milk brings out the flavor better.”

Sun dug a spoon out of a drawer and stirred the dark, rich-scented liquid in the pan intently.

“I wish my mother were here,” Sun said, still looking into the pan.

“I can’t begin to imagine,” Kala said. “I can’t count how many times I ask my mother for advice in the course of even a week. Even if she just listens while I talk something through. It was actually something that made me realize I couldn’t go through with marrying Rajan: I couldn’t talk to her about it. It was like lying to myself. It was like I kept hoping it would become the truth because I told her.”

“Did you ever have secrets from your mother before that?” Sun asked.

“Yes, and no.” Kala shook her head. “There are stories I’ve never told her, things I’ve done she doesn’t know about. But it’s not that I can’t tell her about those things. I just never have. Some of them would be embarrassing, but I could tell her.” Kala chuckled softly. “This was different, though. It felt like,” she took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling as she searched for the right words, “like a betrayal of her trust somehow. Like I’d taken something from her.”

Sun rested the spoon on the paper bag, pock-marked with the texture of the spices as she had pounded them. She leaned back against the sink, her back to the window, arms folded loosely across her chest.

“Because she was so happy about Rajan?” She asked.

“No, because I was doing it because I thought it was what others wanted. She told me, she said, ‘Kala, you’ve always managed to ask more of yourself than we have. But it is not for you to decide what I want from you and pretend that it’s your dream.’”

Sun chewed her lip and looked down at where she traced circles on the gray linoleum tile with her big toe. She thought of her mother’s request for her to look after her brother and wondered if her mother would have echoed the words of Kala’s. Honesty had never been at so much of a premium in Sun’s family.

“It’s not even so much wanting her advice. I wish she could see what it’s like, to see that it could be okay.”

“I don’t follow,” Kala said.

“I’m not sure how to say it concisely,” Sun said and shifted irritably against the sink. “Like last Monday morning. The day before, we moved most of the things here to the Ruaka apartment. We woke up at six o’clock like we usually do, but Shiro was so exhausted from the day before that she could barely get up. Capheus immediately made sure that she was comfortable and that she had her medicine, then started cooking porridge and tea for her breakfast.”

“That’s all very sweet, but I don’t know that I see what’s so remarkable about that,” Kala said, her forehead deeply creased.

“If it were my brother or my father, that would never have happened. My father might have said not to worry about him and had his secretary order him breakfast. My brother would have complained about being hungry, if he were up at all. Neither of them would have thought about what she needed right then.”

“But your mother did get sick and need help.”

“And my father hired other people to care about that.” Sun turned her eyes out the window again, but noted as Kala cast her eyes towards her bare feet. 

“Were you able to find the goat’s milk?” Kala asked as she opened the fridge. She had suggested it to Sun after she had arrived in Kenya and been confronted with milky tea that the connection no longer insulated her from.

“Yes, Capheus knew exactly who to talk to. He always does.” Sun replied, her face taking on a softness. “It’s in the big water bottle. The one without a label.”

Kala quickly located the bottle, holding it up in front of her. She uncapped the bottle and sniffed it, then made a face. Sun side-eyed the expression with concern.

“Is it still good?” She asked. “He got it fresh on Friday. I don’t think that’s too old, is it?”

“No, it’s fine. It’s just really goaty,” Kala said, giggling as she joined Sun by the stove. Her eyes shifted between the bottle and the pan a few times before she poured about half the milk into the pan. They both watched quietly as the milk swirled up and through the dark liquid in the pan, the creamy spiral arms rolling out and curling slowly. An earthy smell mingled with the heady fragrance of the spices in the air.

Sun leaned into the fragrant steam, closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose. She was suddenly overcome with a sort of soothing sense of familiarity at the scent. The thought hit her awareness as she caught herself smiling softly. She looked up and saw Kala wearing much the same expression.

“This smell always reminds me of being in the kitchen with my father,” she smiled. Sun’s heart twisted gently. “Between school and dance practice I didn’t have a lot of time to spend with him there, so it always felt special. Grinding the masala for the chai was something he used to let me do when I got more than a few minutes with him there.”

Sun could see it clearly then: Kala at about age eight, her long hair braided down her back. She stood on a chair with its back pushed up against the stainless steel countertop next to an impressive looking and equally gleaming machine. Her father stood next to her, looking up, beaming and laughing as she looked down at him with a gap-toothed grin. She held a large, metal measuring cup with enough dents to fill a storybook. Her father flipped a switch on top of the machine and she could hear a loud whirring sound. Her father gestured towards the measuring cup and Kala slowly poured a stream of spices into the hopper on top of the machine. The same sharply spicy smell from the kitchen reached Sun’s senses, first rising above the distinctive, rich smell of the restaurant kitchen and then being claimed by it. The pitcher empty and set on the counter, Kala’s father switched the machine off and reached up to his daughter with a broad smile. She hopped into his arms and he lowered her to the ground. She shook the stainless bin under the fabric collar around the grinder’s chute and gently pulled it out. She leaned in to smell the spices in the bin. 

“I don’t think my father ever looked at me that way,” Sun said plainly, still buoyed by the warmth of Kala’s memory. “The times he came the closest, when he actually saw me, which was rare, it was like he felt he owed me something.” Sun leaned in to smell the tea, as if the scent could renew the peace of that moment in the restaurant kitchen. “I remember feeling that way with my mother, sometimes. Especially when we used to practice taekwondo together. As if there were no place in the world she would rather be right then.”

“I wish your mother were here, too,” said Kala quietly. “You should probably stir the tea. You don’t want it to boil over with the milk.”

Sun looked around, as if reorienting herself to her own surroundings, remembering where she had set the spoon. 

“It’s how being with Capheus feels most of the time,” Sun said, continuing to stir the simmering pot absentmindedly. Kala crossed her arms, wrestling with her own smile but said nothing. “I feel it from Shiro, too, especially when we’re talking over tea, but I still feel I owe her some sort of debt.”

“You need to think of this less like a business and more like a family,” Kala said. “What could you owe her? Weren’t you just saying that you were tired of your father treating you like he owed you something?”

The spoon paddled the same lazy path across the pan slowly, repeatedly as Sun tried to line these things up.

“That’s different. My father did owe me something. He just never figured out it took more than money or guilt to pay it, so it never changed.” Sun turned to look up at Kala.

“You’re making assumptions about what Shiro wants from you. It’s not fair to her. You may not be what she imagined - and who could imagine this - but that does not mean you are not what she wants you to be.”

Sun leaned back against the wall and looked out at the courtyard again. The girl outside with the soccer ball had been joined by her brother and they faced off, one on one, in the street. She looked back at her feet, crossed in front of her, and then lifted her head to face Kala again where she sat.

“I beat a man unconscious in front of her the other day in the market,” Sun said plainly, as if explaining that they were out of sugar. She tried to watch Kala’s reaction without being noticed. Kala offered a pained sigh in response, but didn’t appear shocked by the admission.

“I thought he had stolen her wallet,” Sun added.

“Was he alright?” Kala asked nervously.

“I think so. He got up and ran off,” Sun said. “Wolfgang said he’d be fine.”

“To be honest, I don’t know whether his recommendation makes me feel better or worse about it,” Kala said, her hands rubbing her face then sliding up to frame it as she leaned her weight onto them, her elbows resting on her knees. 

“He did actually steal a wallet,” Sun said. “It just happened to be the empty one.” Kala sighed again heavily.

“Was she alright?” Kala asked.

“That’s what she said, so I think so, but I’m not sure she would have told me if she did have a problem with it,” Sun replied. “It doesn’t quite sit right with me. It’s like my lack of ability to do simple things like cook rice without a rice cooker. It’s something a child can do, but I can’t.”

“To be fair, there are people who spend their whole lives trying to cook the perfect pot of rice,” Kala said.

Sun nodded in agreement. “You know what I mean,” she said and she shrugged. “Anyway, I couldn’t get much of a straight answer out of her outside of her being surprised.”

“Did she know that was something you did? Do you practice at home at all?”

“Yes, but I don’t know to what degree. I’ve been doing the same solo workout I was doing in prison, so she’s seen that. But practice forms look much more controlled than an actual fight. I just can’t quite believe that she is actually as positive about things as she presents herself.”

“Well, what do you want her to think?” Kala asked. Sun gave Kala a pained look and picked up the spoon to stir the chai again, her lips pressed together. “No, really. What do you want her to think? Do you want her to be angry? Afraid? Disappointed?” 

She realized that Kala wasn’t asking the question to mock her, but in all seriousness. “I think,” Sun began, but stopped, focusing back on the pot. “I think I just want to apologize and move on.”

“Not to sound rude, but did you try simply saying ‘I’m sorry’?”

“I tried, but my apologies were waved off as unnecessary,” Sun said and Kala nodded. “I don’t know if she’s consciously trying to make me feel better about it or if it’s just a habit at this point.”

Kala sighed and nodded again. “Good question. I can’t really tell. It’s probably some of both. She means well. It sounds like she really wants for you to feel as comfortable as possible.”

“I wish there was more I could do that didn’t run the risk of seeming terrible.”

“Well, you’re making tea for her and her friends. That’s useful and not terrible.” 

Sun nodded agreement.

“It may be a little bit goaty, though,” Kala added with a giggle. Sun rolled her eyes but laughed along. 

“Back to what happened, though. Have you had much opportunity to keep up your...workouts?” Kala asked.

“Like I said, I’ve been doing my prison workout, but there’s a limit to what I can do on my own. Wolfgang and I tried sparring again, but…” Sun said.

“Mmm…” Kala agreed. He meant well, but sparring didn’t really fit into Wolfgang’s fighting style. She tilted her head and looked at the floor. “There must be a place where people practice...that sort of thing in Nairobi.”

Sun’s eyebrows raised thoughtfully.

“It might do you good to have something to do outside of the house, on your own.”

Sun folded her arms in front of her and nodded at her feet.

“Don’t you think it might attract the wrong attention?” She asked. Kala shrugged.

“Think about why you chose to hide out in Kenya,” she said. Sun smirked quietly and Kala blushed gently and smiled herself. “Okay, but think about why it was a good idea to hide out here,” she said. She felt a new lightness in what Kala had said. She was a little angry for not thinking of it herself, but suspected she might have talked herself out of it if it hadn’t come from someone else.

She grabbed her phone from where it sat on the counter. A message had come in from Capheus that she hadn’t noticed.

“Sounds like they’ll be here in about twenty minutes,” she said before opening a search for taekwondo and kickboxing classes in the city.

“We should probably add the tea, then,” said Kala, picking up the yellow foil bag with its rolled top from the back of the counter. Sun looked up from her search with some reluctance and set the phone back on the counter. Her searches had turned up a number of results for both taekwondo and kickboxing in Nairobi and her stomach tickled with excitement. Kala had her nose in the bag of tea. 

“This is what we usually have. You said this works best with a very strong, basic black tea. Nothing fancy. Does this seem alright?” Sun asked. Kala had poured a small amount of the almost granulated tea into her hand and was examining it with a close eye as she pushed it around her palm with her thumb. 

“Kala?” Sun repeated as Kala continued scrutinizing the bits of tea.

“Oh, yes, this should do fine,” she replied somewhat distantly. She shook dry tea out into her palm and added it to the pot, then repeated the process. Sun stirred in the tea as it steamed in the pan, the rich, creamy tan beginning to darken slightly.

“It still seems wrong, somehow, making tea in a saucepan,” Sun said. 

“There are kinds of fancy teas where that would be a great offense, it’s true. This is not that kind of tea. The secret is that it’s not all that fancy; the tea part certainly isn’t. It’s just well-complemented,” Kala shrugged. “They’re simple pieces that make something greater together.”

Sun looked at Kala and she smiled as she stirred the tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made (and drank) so much chai while I was writing this chapter. In case you are struck with the same urge, here's the recipe I've been using.
> 
> Makes ~2 qts chai, which can be refrigerated and reheated as desired. Not tested with actual goat's milk.  
> 10-15 cardamom pods  
> 8-10 cloves  
> 8-10 black peppercorns  
> ½ tsp. fennel seeds  
> ¼ tsp. fenugreek (methi) seeds  
> ~¼ nutmeg  
> 3-4 cinnamon sticks  
> 1 inch fresh ginger, sliced into rounds  
> 4-5 cups water (some will evaporate)  
> 4 cups milk (I usually use 2%, but anything other than skim is fine - the bit about aromatic compounds from spices dissolving better in fats is 100% true!)  
> ¼ c. loose black tea - nothing fancy OR 12 tea bags
> 
> Crush the dry spices in a spice or coffee grinder, mortar and pestle or rolling pin and bag. They need to crack open, but if totally pulverized, they're hard to strain out later.
> 
> Add dry spices and ginger to water in a large saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, then add the milk. Turn heat to low and stir frequently. Milk boils over more aggressively and at a lower temperature. Simmer with milk for another 15-20 minutes, then stir in tea and turn off heat. Let steep for about 10 minutes, then strain and serve with sugar or other sweetener to taste. Store any leftovers in the fridge and reheat as desired.


	3. Taegeuk Il Jang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sun chewed the inside of her lip apprehensively. Most of her was thrilled by the idea: it seemed natural to offer her the thing that had held her together through the years. She worried, though, about the attention it might bring, the questions it might raise. A class once or twice a week at Creative Fitness Centre didn’t raise her profile much. Teaching Silas Kabaka’s daughter was a different matter.

“And then Luna tells Rei to use the pen to transform, because she has been a guardian the whole time. She yells, “Mars power! Make-up!” and she transforms into Sailor Mars, who has special fire powers. That’s what made her be able to read prophecies to begin with.”

Sun watched with a smirk, twisted around in the passenger seat as Amondi performed a lively retelling of an episode of _Sailor Moon_. Capheus had suggested that today, Amondi take a turn telling a story in the van on the way to the clinic. Sun was vaguely familiar with the show and its general setup, but had never actually watched it. She was fairly sure Capheus wasn't any more familiar with it than she was, if at all. 

She still hadn’t warmed to the crush of people, the sound of nineteen different conversations crisscrossing at high speed that defined the atmosphere of the bus most days. Since her arrival, they had fallen into a pattern that resembled their time together when Sun had still been in Korea: Sun only rode with him the two days each week that the van’s sole passenger was Amondi Kabaka. 

Getting to know Amondi at this point was a somewhat strange proposition. By the first time Amondi ever saw Sun, they had secretly been riding together for weeks. Sun had already heard Amondi describe which of her tutors she liked better than others, the recent decorating additions to her room, the isolation she felt under her father’s security lockdown, the different stories that helped her escape. 

Only so much of that detail could be explained under the handwaving of “Capheus has told me so much about you,” that Sun had offered on their first face to face meeting. The isolation of it struck a chord deep in her somewhere in a way that felt impossible to explain as secondhand. To be sure, Sun’s father had not been Silas Kabaka, though their dedication to their work bore some similarity. She didn’t suppose she would trade her own father’s indifference for the passionate defensiveness of Amondi’s father. The end result, the entowered loneliness, seemed to emerge from either case.

It was one of the main reasons Capheus was still driving her. It was for Amondi more than for her father. Neither of them could tell to what degree her father understood that.

That first morning, Capheus had introduced them with a knowing grin as Diana Prince and Jean Grey. Diana Prince had giggled and struck a heroic pose, her fists strongly planted on her hips. Jean Grey had curled the right corner of her lip and the creases of her eyes into a warm smirk.

“Two of my favorite superheroes meet face to face at last,” Capheus had beamed. Sun had rolled her eyes at the time, but she could still feel the words like a warm hand, gentle against her cheek.

Amondi wrapped up her story. “After Rei uses her fire power to defeat the demon, the black hole they traveled through starts to close. And Ami, who is still at the bus stop, uses her Mercury power to hold the black hole open for them. And then the buses fly back through the hole in space and land on the street as lightly as a bird, and everyone is safe. But all the people on the buses - they have all been asleep the whole time and so they don’t even know that they have been through space and almost left there forever!”

“So what happens to Rei now that she has learned that she has this ability?” Capheus asked, his face serious, peering at her dim reflection in the windshield as the wipers slapped back and forth lazily against the drizzle. Amondi brought a finger to her lips as she looked up thoughtfully. Sun turned in her seat to face her and noticed Nomi sitting a few seats back, resting her arms folded on the seat back in front of her and her head on her arms.

“Nothing really, not yet. She goes home to her grandfather and the evil blue-eyed man is gone. He had been in control of the demon.” She took her thoughtful pose again. “I think she feels like some things make more sense, though. She feels like she understands why she has always felt alone and different from others. She has a lot of questions and does not know who she can ask. So many she does not know where to begin. Right now Rei doesn’t know how to find the other guardians, but she knows that they exist. She can feel them.” 

“What if it were you? How do you think you would feel?” Capheus asked. Amondi giggled, but he remained totally straight-faced.

“That would be so cool! I mean, I think it would be a little scary to start. Some of the bad guys they have to fight are very powerful. Even Usagi didn’t want to get on the bus because she knew she would have to be brave and fight even if she did not know exactly what she would be fighting. But they have each other, and that helps them be strong. I would like to fight with a team to help people like that,” Amondi said, balling her fists in front of her and making what Sun imagined she thought was a tough face. Nomi smiled sleepily from where she rested. Sun looked back a moment later and she was gone.

“I don’t know what I can tell you about teams or transformations, but you should ask Miss Grey about fighting. She is an expert fighter!” Capheus said, turning back briefly to look at Amondi. Sun shot Capheus a quick, nervous look.

“Really?” Amondi asked as her eyes grew wide with wonder.

“Expert is a very strong word,” Sun said hesitantly. “I have been studying taekwondo for most of my life, but there is always more to learn.”

“Can you teach me? Please?” She begged. “Please?” She drew the word out dramatically as she repeated it, her hands clasped together in front of her chest. Sun chewed the inside of her lip apprehensively. Most of her was thrilled by the idea: it seemed natural to offer her the thing that had held her together through the years. She worried, though, about the attention it might bring, the questions it might raise. A class once or twice a week at Creative Fitness Centre didn’t raise her profile much. Teaching Silas Kabaka’s daughter was a different matter.

In her mind, she reached out to Capheus beside her, resisting the urge to put her hand on his leg in front of Amondi. She felt a similar ambivalence fogging his reaction as he looked back at her. An overtone of hopefulness broke through over the top of it as well, though. Sun took a deep breath as she looked at him.

“If we get in a little early to the clinic, and it’s not raining too hard, I’ll show you one of the basic forms,” Sun finally conceded. 

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Amondi said, nearly jumping in her seat.

As they pulled up across from the drab cinderblock building that housed the clinic, Amondi bounced out of the van, shrugging her shoulders up, palms facing upward. “There’s no rain. Not really!”

Sun looked over at the clock on the dash. 10:16 and she didn’t need to be in until 10:30. She looked over at Capheus, her lips pressed together, as she stood up. He smiled softly in response, his eyebrows arched high. She could feel that it was something of an indistinct apology for letting his enthusiasm get the best of him. 

She took a deep breath in through her nose as she stepped down out of the van. She exhaled. The words could not be unspoken. Perhaps it was better to take a page out of the book of Capheus and Shiro in this moment: to move cautiously, but embrace the moment in front of you as it presents itself. 

Sun looked for a decent section of mostly level ground out of the road and decided the patch of grass outside the clinic would have to do. A woman in a long white coat waved through the window at Amondi and she smiled and waved back. Sun felt the light, fine mist cling to her skin around her.

“The first thing you need to know is the ready stance. This is the beginning of all of the forms. It doesn’t really serve a practical purpose in a fight, but it is still quite important. It brings your attention to what you are doing,” Sun began. “Start with your feet together. Here, come stand across from me, so you can follow what I do.” 

Sun had taken her turns over the years working with beginners. It had really annoyed her at first, in a similar way that any study of forms had. The defined structure around it felt like it was just getting in the way of actually doing something. Anything that wasn’t sparring - or actual fighting - felt extraneous. Teaching felt like trying to explain to someone how to walk or how to breathe: detailing movement that your body did almost outside of conscious thought. In fact, sometimes it was teaching people to walk or breathe in a particular way.

“Feet together. Now stand up straight. Your weight should be evenly divided between your feet so that your stance feels strong, but easy. Your hands should be at your sides to start. Your fingers should feel like they are glued together.”

It was a combination of t’ai chi and starting to fight professionally that had actually turned her around on the study of forms. The fighting afforded her most of the opportunity she needed to push through the emotions backed up inside her. 

“Like this?” Amondi asked, looking forward very seriously. Capheus’s arms were folded on the edge of the rolled down window, his head rested on them as he watched.

“That’s basically it. Now, take a deep breath in slowly and then let it out.” As she breathed slowly in through her nose, she watched the girl take a somewhat exaggerated gulp of air in the way that she had seen a number of young first-timers do.

T’ai chi was all presence and awareness in movement and breath. When she had started, it was as much as anything because she felt as though whenever she moved through one of those forms, that her mother was always mirroring her movements, five steps behind her, just out of her sight. Its practicality hadn’t really clicked for her until she had started fighting seriously. Many times it was that control and awareness as much as raw energy that made her successful. Raw energy was easy. Being able to harness and refine it was another thing.

“More gently,” she said. “In through your nose. The point is to be more present where you are. To be aware of what is supporting you.” The language would have to come later. “Breathe with me this time.”

Sun looked Amondi in the eye as they took a breath in, slowly, and exhaled gently.

“Better. Now we add hand and foot movement with the breath. Watch me first.” Sun stepped to the left, opening her stance slightly and swept her open palms up so that her middle fingers almost met in front of her navel, raising them in parallel like this. She wrapped them into fists at about the level of her heart and gently pushed them down in front of her, slightly away from the body, arms slightly soft and rounded. She had done this movement so many times it almost felt like part of the breath. 

She had come to appreciate aspects of both in the basic forms of taekwondo. The familiarity of the motions let her feel the edges of her body in the motion, feel the flow of energy moving from one part of the body to another as balance and attention shifted.

“Now try it with me. We’ll start in four stages, but this should become one fluid motion in time with your breathing. First, take a small step with your left foot to open your stance to about shoulder width. Your weight should still be evenly balanced.” Sun mirrored her movements about a meter in front of her.

“Second, hands come up, palms open and up, and almost meet. Good. Next, bring them up to your chest, still slowly and make a fist with the back of your hand facing out. Okay. Now your arms push down and forward in front of you, about a fist’s breadth away from your body. They should not be completely straight. You never want to lock your joints. Imagine that your arms are like a big circle in front of you. Good.”

Amondi’s movements were stiff and a little disjointed, but she got to the right key stance at the end. It was as much as could be reasonably expected from a first timer. 

“Now put it all together with your breath: breathing in as you step and hands come up, out as your fists go down. Good.”

In truth, each of the movements required refinement, but there would always be more to do in that respect.

“That’s _junbi seogi_ , ready stance. It begins all of the basic forms, but I’ll show you the beginning of the first one we learn, _taegeuk il jang_. The next two steps are a low block and a right punch. But before I show you that, let me show you how to make a fist.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have seen exactly one Sailor Moon episode and I watched it specifically to write this because it seemed like the right kind of thing for Amondi to be into. I hadn’t even considered the transformational awakening piece until after I started writing. 
> 
> Also, if anyone would like to critique my description of basic taekwondo moves, please do. I'm also still struggling a little to get a handle on what a Korean's relationship to t'ai chi would be (though my research turned up the interesting fact that _taegeuk_ and t'ai chi are basically cognates), though for this story's purposes it's basically Sun's relationship to her mother.


	4. The Legendary Susan Park

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I understand that you have reservations about bringing her into this. What man wants to drag his woman into a dangerous field? I certainly can’t disagree with your level of caution. But what you must understand is that she is already involved, simply by her association with you. I’m sure you must have already considered that.” Kabaka explained, rubbing his hands together slowly before letting them fall into his lap again.

Capheus and Amondi were singing along with the Jackson 5 on the radio when the wheels of the van crunched into the gravel driveway.

Amondi’s father was outside waiting for her, beaming at her through the window. He liked to greet her when she returned from treatment whenever he could, but business frequently kept him away during the day. Amondi bounced and smiled in her seat when she saw him waiting for her.

“Keeping up with the classics, I see,” he said with a smile as he stepped up to the open window in his crisp, dark suit. 

“ _Amosi, ong’era matin! Ingima?_ ” Mr. Kabaka immediately turned his attention to his daughter, sliding the van door open and greeting her in Dholuo, their mother tongue, as he usually did. 

“ _Angima maber, baba,_ ” Amondi replied as she stepped down out of the van, her beaded braids bouncing along with her. Capheus rested his head against the seat back and tuned out their conversation; easy enough as it wasn’t a language he knew that well. The afternoon sun felt pleasant through the window, especially after several dreary days of rain. He let his eyes slide shut for a moment as the van idled, his hands resting lightly on the wheel.

“Oh, baby, give me one more chance,” he hummed along with the music, tapping along on the wheel.

A few moments later, Capheus’s eyes were startled open by a knock on the van next to his head. Mr. Kabaka stood quietly outside his window. Peripherally, he saw Amondi disappear into the front door of the huge villa. Capheus felt his stomach tighten at the attention and snapped the radio off. 

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Kabaka said, “It’s about Miss Grey.” Capheus’s hands dug into the wheel as he gripped it tightly at the mention of Sun by any of the names she had acquired. By the name used, it seemed a good part of his information was from Amondi. Of course she had told her father about it. In some ways, it was more surprising this conversation hadn’t happened earlier. How could you tell an eleven year-old to keep a secret from a parent on whom she doted without it seeming suspicious?

It was hard to tell how much he knew, though. Capheus was aware that Kabaka kept tabs on him, though not to what degree. Within days of their move, he had sent a housewarming gift, flowers and a bottle of imported whiskey, to the new apartment, despite Capheus never mentioning it. That information clearly hadn’t come from Amondi.

He tried to hold his face calm. Mr. Kabaka had a warm, gentle expression on his face. It seemed dangerously out of sync with the creases of his suit. He could be a hard man to read. He had the guarded ease of a snake in the sun, a pleasant smile that he could maintain while chopping off a man’s hands. 

Particularly since the debacle with the Superpower gang, Kabaka had treated Capheus with a conversational openness that made him suspicious. It was a combination of the nauseating uncertainty of his position there and the nagging worry that he had actually cemented a place in Kabaka’s inner circle. He wasn’t sure which eventuality made him more uncomfortable.

“Do you mind if I step up and have a seat with you?” Kabaka asked as he stepped up into the van without waiting for a response and wound himself over to the passenger seat.

“Please,” Capheus said, as pleasantly as he could muster, gesturing to the seat with one hand. The other hand still gripped two o’clock. He had the uneasy sense of someone behind him and headchecked the seats of the van. All empty. He turned back and hand his left hand returned to its position on the wheel.

“About Miss Grey,” Kabaka began, trailing into a deep pause, “Amondi told me about her brief martial arts lesson the other day. She was so thrilled. She came home and she wanted to show me how to make a fist,” he chuckled, charmed at the idea. Capheus shifted in his seat and laughed softly without letting his hands drop. 

“Now, I saw a picture of you two a little ways back. I can’t say she’s much my type, to look at, at least; I like my women with a little more…” he trailed off, grunting as he traced a thoughtful pair of parentheses with the blades of his hands in the air. “You know?” He shrugged and chuckled, clapping Capheus on the arm. "But _akili ni nywele_ , eh? You look happy together.” Capheus smiled and nodded awkwardly through the cold knot in his belly. He dug for some words of neutral agreement to offer.

“She is in many ways a remarkable woman,” Capheus agreed cautiously.

“So it would seem! Now, around the same time I heard something about some kind of a spectacular fighting performance by a Chinese woman at Wakulima Market, taking down a pickpocket.” 

“Korean,” Capheus interrupted, wondering immediately after the fact if correcting him was the best idea. “Apologies for the interruption, but she’s Korean, not Chinese.” 

“Very well, so it was her! What fortune! In any event, it sounds like it was quite a sight to see,” Kabaka continued unfazed as if recapping a boxing match he’d heard about while waiting for the bus. “I heard she had him out cold in under ten seconds. Remarkable, indeed.” His amiable tone seemed blithely unaware that the very nature of the conversation came off as a veiled threat. 

It was possible that his knowledge of the fight was incidental: a story passed hand to hand that hadn’t connected until Amondi had told him about a certain Miss Grey. He had a way, though, of projecting the suggestion of his presence into many places. 

“How did you meet her anyway? I mean, she’s obviously not from around here. Is she here for work? For pleasure?” Kabaka chuckled to himself, “Some of both?” Capheus smiled broadly and sighed. Storytelling had a surprising number of practical applications.

Capheus himself had told the first Susan Park stories to Sun in the days after she’d arrived in Nairobi. She had felt a bit overwhelmed in trying to introduce herself as Susan Park, the name on the American passport Nomi had gotten cooked up for her. Nomi had given her a few limited details: a passport that listed her birthplace as California, USA, a driver’s license with an address in Santa Monica, California, well-stamped burrito and coffee cards, whatever that was about. A Hello Kitty wallet. Other than that, though, she was a blank slate.

“How can I introduce Susan Park if I know nothing about her?” She had griped to Capheus as they lay curled together on the floor in the dark, resting against the cushions they had pulled down off of the couch. “She can’t just be me with a different name. That seems too dangerous.” And so Capheus had told her a story about Susan Park. The first story had been about Susan Park and her mother hiking in the mountains as they often did on vacations, when they were drawn to the pitiful cries of a tiny puppy and had to fight off vicious policemen who wanted to take the puppy away. It had taken a while to settle on what an appropriate villain would be as they speculated what kind of vicious animals might live in Southern California. The puppy, of course, came to live with them and lived a long and loyal life.

The Susan Park character had started taking on its own personality after that. The cluster now passed around Susan Park stories. Most of them fit a similar structure: the beginning established a fairly reasonable detail, but it eventually devolved into some kind of ridiculous attack that she had to fight through. Each story allowed her to come to life a little more fully even as she spent part of it engaged in larger than life activity.

Although the backbone of the character was rooted in Sun’s own family history and Nomi’s knowledge of California, each teller breathed a little of their own lived experience into her: the inchoate godchild of each and all of them.

“Well, not for business,” Capheus explained, examining Kabaka’s reactions as he spun out the story. “Although it’s hard to say she came for pleasure either. Not exactly. Her father died not long ago and it made her start to think over what she was doing with her life. She saw his example as someone who never stopped working long enough to enjoy what he had earned and worried that she was setting herself up the same way. Her mother died when she was younger and so she came into some money when he died. She already had some means of her own, too. So, she quit her job and decided to travel the world for some time.” 

“Nice if you can make it happen, I suppose,” Kabaka nodded bemusedly, holding the handle above the window loosely. “Maybe I’ll quit my job and try that some time,” he joked dryly and chuckled. Capheus laughed with him warmly, but without dropping his studious guard. 

“Me, too,” Capheus laughed.

“Well, in your case it’s a little different. Have you talked about what happens when she leaves? How long is she staying anyway?” Kabaka asked with an open thoughtfulness in his voice.

“Ah, well,” Capheus scratched his head. “That’s hard to say. She was only planning on staying two weeks when she arrived, but, ah, she’s already been here nearly a month. And I don’t think she’s planning on leaving any time soon.” The smile he offered here was uncalculatedly genuine.

“How did you even…” Kabaka began and then stopped himself. “Actually, nevermind. I suppose I should stop chatting and be direct,” Capheus’s smile faded quickly. Not that this was unexpected. Conversation with Kabaka was always business, even when it wasn’t transparently so. In truth, Capheus preferred it that way. It accorded him a certain sense of distance. “Miss Grey’s lesson the other day seemed to light a spark for my daughter that lines up with something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.”

Kabaka looked out at the house for a moment reflectively. From where Capheus sat his eyes seemed to fall on the dark, engraved wood of the door. His expression darkened, too.

“You know what happened to my wife, of course. To Amondi’s mother?” He asked gravely.

“I’d heard stories, but I prefer not to trust rumors,” Capheus replied. In truth it had been one of the first things he had heard about Kabaka, though he had heard a number of different tellings of it. 

“Well, I’m sure you understand the most important details, even so, then. I won’t drag you through the rest of it,” Kabaka said tersely, his hands steepled together in front of his face, his forefingers digging into his chin before folding together against his mouth. Capheus nodded solemnly. For all the stories he’d heard, they seemed to agree on the key elements: Kabaka’s wife had been captured by rivals of his, and had not survived. It had been many years ago, when Kabaka had not been quite so powerful. Amondi must have been only a baby. From what he understood, Kabaka’s strength and influence, his command on his particular markets had grown drastically not long after that. 

“Since then, I have built everything I do around protecting what is most important to me,” he said, his hands parting for one of his hands to massage the other. “I know you understand something about that. But I also know that even the strongest walls don’t stand forever. I’ve been thinking about how best to teach Amondi to defend herself, since I know I would not actually be her best instructor there, even if I had the time. At one point, I actually thought about asking you to be her teacher, but it was when you considered leaving even driving Amondi to her appointments so it didn’t seem worth pressing. But what would you think about Miss Grey teaching her?” Kabaka’s hands fell open into his lap again. The question was unsurprising at this point, but still sat like a cold weight inside him. 

“Well, obviously the final decision is hers to make,” Capheus said plainly. Kabaka nodded.

“Of course,” he agreed. “But if she’s planning on staying around Nairobi instead of heading back to - where was it?”

“California,” Capheus offered unwaveringly. 

“Back to California, then - her opportunities to work will be limited,” Kabaka pointed out. “She would be well-compensated, of course. And Amondi seems to really like her. Besides, it seems more appropriate somehow for her to learn self-defense from a woman, does it not?” 

“I suppose it does,” Capheus conceded. “But I am certain there must be other women in Nairobi who can fight, who might make a suitable instructor.”

“You’re probably right, but Amondi already knows Miss Grey. She likes her. She trusts her,” Kabaka explained, rubbing his hands together slowly before letting them fall into his lap again. “I understand that you have reservations about bringing her into this. What man wants to drag his woman into a dangerous field? I certainly can’t disagree with your level of caution. But what you must understand is that she is already involved, simply by her association with you. I’m sure you must have already considered that.”

Capheus turned his face away and nodded wordlessly. For a moment, they were both silent.

“So you’ll speak with her about it?” 

Capheus nodded again, placing his hands on the steering wheel. 

“Excellent,” Kabaka said, as he stood up and stepped down out of the van, still resting his hand on the door jamb and leaning in. “She really does sound like an interesting woman. I should invite all of you for dinner sometime. I should like especially to hear about her travels. Myself, I actually haven’t had much opportunity to travel outside of the region. London a few times. Was in Mumbai once. Quite spectacular. Always glad to come home, though. You?”

The mention of those two cities together chilled Capheus to the bone. He prayed that it didn’t show. He looked Kabaka right in the eyes and smiled, chuckling gently. “I’ve never set foot outside of Kenya,” he smiled softly, catching his footing in the conversation again. “Except in my dreams.”

“Tuesday, then,” Mr. Kabaka smiled back. “You talk to her over the weekend and we’ll talk when you come to pick Amondi up on Tuesday.” He slid the van door shut. “Bring Miss Grey, too. You don’t have to keep dropping her off early to pretend she isn’t riding with you. You never did. It would seem particularly silly after this, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course,” Capheus replied, still nursing the sick, somewhat defeated feeling inside himself as he turned the key and the engine growled alive. “Until Tuesday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got really delightfully sidetracked doing language research around this chapter.
> 
>  _“Amosi, ong’era matin! Ingima?”_ Hello, my little monkey! Are you doing well? (Dholuo)  
>  _“Angima maber, baba,”_ I’m doing very well, papa. (Dholuo)  
>  _Akili ni nywele, kila mtu ana zake._ Intelligence is like hair, each has their own. (Swahili proverb)
> 
> I also realized part way through writing this chapter that this marks the first time in 27k-odd words of this series that two dudes have talked to each other.


	5. Hunger and the Stink of the Ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, your eyes are the same blue as hers,” Nadia said with a satisfied, but mournful, sigh, looking at him intently. He gripped his napkin tightly under the table. His aunt kept finding little comparisons like this to point out. Wolfgang could only imagine that identifying the ways he reminded her of her family was meant positively, but there was a sadness to it as well. It almost seemed like an itemization of who he could have been given a different set of circumstances and he wasn’t sure what to do with that. “Well, let’s eat a little soup.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know that St. Petersburg is only a couple degrees of longitude from being due north of Nairobi? I didn't until I started writing this. Sorry for the abruptness of this northward shift, but I promise this belongs here. Don't worry, we're not done in Nairobi yet, either.

Wolfgang found himself biting down on the corner of his phone again as he looked out over the port, leaning against the post marking the bus route. From where he stood, he couldn’t actually see the water, but he could smell it: the bracing combination of diesel, salt and fish that seemed to follow him around these days. 

The smell of tobacco smoke threaded itself to him from the stop’s bench. He looked over to see Kolya and Timur, who had just gotten off shift at the fish packing plant with him, smoking as they talked and waited. Wolfgang shoved his hands in his pockets and urged himself not to ask for a cigarette. Most of the day, he could ignore the craving, but this time of day, even more than the nicotine rush, he would kill to smell anything besides fish.

The dull ache of eight hours loading freezing crates of fish hung on his body and he shot a glance back over at the bench. Kolya and Timur were caught up in some kind of animated discussion. Even though it had been about two weeks since he had arrived in Saint Petersburg, the rust still hadn't been worked off of his Russian, and it still came slow and somewhat forced. It took double the focus to tune into a conversation like this one, so he simply hadn’t. He knew it would be impossible to avoid the conversation if he sat down, though, and spat casually on the ground as he turned away.

He took a few steps away down the side of the road, stretching as he looked over at the shipping crates stacked like colorful toys against the brilliant blue of the sky. He felt his stomach grumble the time and sighed. His eyes fell shut as he inhaled and he was pleasantly surprised to smell a warm note of spice and frying mixed in with the grimy brine of the port.

His eyes opened to the laughter of a brilliantly lit evening. A golden-glowing curve of lights framed the broad, palm-lined street leading away from him and the crush of people strolling around him. The humid evening clung to his skin almost immediately and he could hear the whispering rhythm of the ocean just past the white noise of the dozen conversations surrounding him. 

The twisting hunger in his belly amplified as his eyes searched the crowd for her. She could only be so far away if he was here. He hadn’t realized Mumbai was on the water too, but as he focused on the thought he remembered playing here on the beach as a child. As the memory turned to a cone of newsprint filled with something that smelled delicious he saw her turn from a kiosk about ten feet away, her profile lit by the thin glow from inside. She was talking with some friends. He saw her sister, Daya, too. She held a paper cone like the one he had seen in her memory. 

Her head turned a little farther and he saw her mouth fall silent and her eyes widen as she recognized him. 

“Kala? Is everything alright?” He heard one of her friends ask. He’d been so tired after work that it had been days since they had seen each other last. Wolfgang suddenly felt nervously conscious of the musty, fishy smell lingering from the plant that he had dragged into her Friday night out.

“I just,” Kala began, her body already listing in his direction as she scrambled for an excuse to step away for a few minutes. “I just remembered I need to make a phone call. I’ll be right over there.” She gestured towards the aluminum post fence with her free hand. She took a few steps towards him, rushing to pull the wireless earpiece out of her bag and press it into her ear before getting her phone out. She barely even looked at it as she went through the motions of pretending to make a call.

Their arms just barely brushed together as they walked towards the fence dividing the walkway from the sand. Wolfgang resisted the urge to lean into her, to wrap himself around her, for fear of gifting her with fish stink. He knew no one else would be able to smell it, but it was hard to say how long she would notice it on her. He leaned forward against one of the fence posts and looked out over the water to the city’s twinkling skyline. Kala leaned back, sitting against the crosspost of the fence just next to him.

“It’s beautiful here,” he said finally, turning to her. 

“This is one of my favorite views of the city,” she agreed, turning her head towards the skyline. “Especially at night. There’s a really beautiful old movie theater not far from here. It’s not the most convenient to home but I like to come out this way to go to the movies sometimes so I have a reason to come here after.”

“Is that where you’re coming from now?” He asked. She nodded.

“Where are you right now?” She asked. 

“Waiting for the bus. I just got off work,” he said and his stomach grumbled again. He eyed the food in the paper cone and grinned an impish smile. “What is that you’re eating? I think the smell of it dragged me all the way here from Russia.”

“Oh, so you just came for dinner?” She laughed. A breeze skipping in off the water ruffled her hair into her face as he reached in to delicately brush hair out of her mouth, his fingers lingering on the soft down of her cheek.

“And maybe dessert,” he said as his fingers brushed against her skin. Her eyes slid shut as she leaned into his touch and a shiver rippled through him under his skin. 

“Bhel puri,” she said as she opened her eyes and pushed the cone towards him. The newsprint was becoming spotted with the sauce seeping through and his mouth watered. He accepted it and hungrily spooned a bite into his mouth. It popped alive with tangy spice and crunch. As he chewed, the heat in his mouth built more than he was expecting and he pushed his breath out in a way startlingly similar to how he breathed into his hands to warm them in freezing weather. At least it was burning the smell of fish out of his nose, he thought.

Kala giggled as his nose started to run and his face reddened. He looked her in the eye as he took another bite.

“Russia’s shit for spicy food,” he said as he grinned and sniffled through his second bite.

“Speaking of which, how are things going with Tyotya Nadia?” Kala asked, speaking her title and name as if they were one word, the way he did in his creaky Russian. “Is she still feeding you like some sort of prize goat?”

Wolfgang rolled his eyes as he nodded his head, covering his mouth and chuckling through his mouthful of food. His eyes had started watering as well. 

“It’s like her only purpose outside of her job is putting food and tea and vodka in front of us,” Wolfgang shook his head. “But she’d do that for almost anyone who stepped in off the street. That’s just how it works. I think it might actually be simpler for her if I wasn’t family. I’m pretty sure she likes Felix better than she likes me.”

Kala nodded, giggling, “Don’t most people?” Wolfgang made a face at her, red and weeping with spice. 

“See, it’s getting worse!” He sniffed and took another bite. “No, it’s good, though. It’s better than it was. She’s still keeping close tabs on where I go, but she’s not trying to lock me into the bedroom at night anymore.” When they had arrived, Tyotya Nadia had insisted that Wolfgang and Felix take the apartment’s one bedroom while she slept on the sofa. After they had gone to bed, he had heard her wedge a chair under the doorknob.

He offered the bhel puri back to her, still breathing fire. “Here, I think I’m full up on spicy for a couple more days, thanks. You bought this because you wanted to eat it, anyway.” 

Kala took back the paper cone, taking a bite herself. Wolfgang pulled the collar of his dark gray tee shirt up over his face to wipe his eyes and scowled as it bathed him in the scent of sweat and fish innards again. He shook his head and laughed.

“Okay, give me one more bite of that to kill this damned fish smell again.”

“Is that you?” She laughed as she lifted a spoonful to his mouth. “There’s always a particular,” she paused, her eyes lining up with his as his mouth closed gently around the spoon, ”odor from the water here. It wouldn’t be Chowpatty without it.” 

His tongue circled the spoon as he swiped the spicy grains off of it, imagining the heat of it to be the taste of her skin. She pulled the spoon out of his mouth slowly, without dropping eye contact, licking her bottom lip as she drew it into her teeth. He chewed the bite slowly, smiling at her as his eyes and nose dripped. 

_“Ey, ty, nemyets. Zdyes’ avtobus.”_ The light slap on his shoulder jerked him back into the daylight and his head whipped around to see Timur, the bus idling behind him as the words registered in his head. “Hey, you, German. The bus is here.”

“Everything okay, kid?” Timur asked, surprised to see his face red and streaming.

“Yeah, okay,” Wolfgang sniffed, still thinking of Kala’s face as she’d offered him a spoonful of bhel puri. “Just thinking about dinner,” he said. It wasn’t really a lie.

Timur let out a deep belly laugh, his eyes crinkling deeper into the warm caramel of his weathered face. “Oh, man, I have days like that, too,” he chuckled and they started walking towards the bus. “You ever eat Uzbek food? My mother makes a plov with lamb and apricot that can bring people to tears like that.”

“Is plov Uzbek food?” Wolfgang asked as they stepped up onto the bus and took a seat. “My mother always made it with beef and carrots.” He said before he’d even thought about it. The little old woman who looked as though she’d been serving as bus conductor since the days of Brezhnev shuffled over in her bright orange vest to scan their passes.

“Russia wouldn’t have rice at all if it weren’t for us!” Timur boasted warmly. “It was the Silk Road that gave this country a taste for rice in the first place and there is no higher purpose for rice than a good plov.” 

Timur chatted his ear off all the way to where he got off at Avtovo station, mostly about his family and the many virtues of Uzbek food. His coworker seemed perfectly happy to do all the talking so long as Wolfgang looked attentive and acknowledged him once in awhile, which was fine by him. He learned that for all his Uzbek pride, Timur had actually been born and raised in Saint Petersburg, where his parents had moved so that his father could take a research job at the university. His mother had just moved in with Timur, his wife and their three children last year after his father had passed. At Avtovo, Timur changed for the metro, leaving the bus to Wolfgang and a small handful of others. Before leaving, he insisted that Wolfgang come visit him to eat his mother’s plov sometime.

As the bus continued on, his thoughts drifted back to Kala, as they tended to, but nothing caught to bring him to her again. He supposed it was probably better if he could get a shower in before he saw her again, anyway.

The job. It had to be fish. Tyotya Nadia, his mother’s sister, had hooked him up with it through an acquaintance who worked in the plant’s bookkeeping office. Taking this job had been one of the conditions of him and Felix staying with her. He had offered to find work on his own, but she’d insisted. Whatever she might say, it was clear to him that it wasn’t just about helping him find a decent job. He was confident he could have found work - clean work - on his own in security or something else that capitalized on the more legitimate side of his skillset. 

The difference was that this was a job his father never would have agreed to work; he thought himself above that kind of manual labor unless there was a gun to his head. He couldn’t really blame her for testing him like that. He didn’t trust anyone related to his father, either. He suspected his own trust couldn’t be bought for a price as cheap as forty paid hours a week hauling crates.

The bus dropped Wolfgang on the far side of the wide triangle of green from where his aunt’s apartment building was. He cut across a well-worn path in the grass toward the drab concrete of the Soviet-built apartment block where she lived. Just across the park were a couple of newly-built apartment buildings, all red-brick and glass, at least two times as high as any of the other buildings in sight. He sneered at them with the well-practiced disdain of a lifelong local wondering what the neighborhood is coming to. 

His feet echoed in the concrete stairwell as he dragged himself up the stairs to Tyotya Nadia’s fifth floor apartment. Felix swung the door open when he knocked, leaning on his bull cane.

“So, are you biting the fish or are the fish biting you?” His friend asked with a smile as Wolfgang tiredly slipped his shoes off just inside the door. 

“How long did it take you to come up with that stupid joke?” Wolfgang said with a grin and an exasperated sigh, shoving him gently as he walked by. 

“Hey!” Felix protested with a grin.

The rich, comforting smell of herbed tomato and meat cooking together dragged him the short distance into the kitchen where Nadia was slicing some cucumbers onto a small plate. His aunt’s cooking wasn’t always what he would choose first for himself, but there was an appealing if bittersweet familiarity tied up in it that hadn’t been part of his life in years. This smell he knew precisely: the stuffed peppers his mother had made frequently when he was a small child.

“Wolfgang! Sadis’, tvoj chai budyet gotov cherez minutochku. Kak u tebya na rabotye?” Nadia asked warmly. Her long, dark hair was still piled on her head, a full face of makeup on from her workday in accounting, but she’d changed into navy-blue leggings and oversized, floral-print t-shirt. “Wolfgang! Sit down, your tea will ready in a minute. How’s it going at work?”

“Normalno,” he shrugged. “Podozhdi. Ya pomoyus’ i potom chai. Ya pakhnut kak ryba.”  
“It’s fine. Wait. I’ll wash up, and then tea. I stink like fish.” 

“Ukh, ty. Nu, bystro,” she said as Felix limped in behind him, taking a seat in one of the chairs around the small kitchen table. Two plates, one with slices of sausage and cheese, one with thick slices of dark bread, already sat on the table. “Oh, you. Well, be quick.”

“I ty chai budyesh, Felix?” “And will you have tea, Felix?” She asked Felix very slowly, leaning down to where he sat, dragging the words out in saccharine tones as if she were talking to a small child. “Chai?” Wolfgang hung around the doorway trying not to laugh too hard at this exchange, Nadia trying to teach Felix Russian the only way she knew how.

“Da, chai budu,” Felix responded with a bold smile in his minimal Russian. “Yes, I’ll have tea.” 

“Molodets!” Nadia praised him, patting his cheek. Wolfgang tried to conceal a laugh as he disappeared into the bathroom with a change of clothes. He exhaled relief as he closed the bathroom door. It seemed this was the only place he got to be alone - truly alone - these days. Solitude was a luxury he hadn’t really considered as such until recently. Even the times he and Felix had been squatting in a single room, they had both found ways to find their own space as needed. But then, Felix had been just as free to move as he was. It made a difference, somehow.

Wolfgang cleared his pockets onto the top of the small washing machine as he stripped, tossing his work clothes right into the washer. He stepped into the tub and turned the water on, sighing at the relief of hot water on his tired muscles. Part of him just wanted to stay here in the bath and wait for Kala. He’d started coming into the bathroom late at night after everyone had gone to bed, lying with his legs scrunched in the dry tub. It wasn’t comfortable, especially layered onto the exhaustion of the day’s work, but it was alone. 

At the root of it, he couldn’t conscience visiting Kala when he was sharing a bed with Felix. It wasn’t that he minded sharing a bed with his friend. They had so many times over the years he barely thought of it. There had been cold nights with minimal shelter when holding each other had felt like survival, like they were orphaned puppies lost in the winter together. Even if his awareness was wholly in India, the effect on his body in Russia no more than that of a dream, it seemed invasive, both to Kala and Felix. Even if they knew. Because they knew. But how could they not?

When he’d tried the last few times, he’d fallen asleep right there in the tub before he’d been able to connect, waking up at improbable angles in the middle of the night and giving up to rejoin Felix in the bedroom.

The scent of work soaped off of him as best he could, Wolfgang reluctantly turned off the shower and got himself dressed for tea.

“Na, tvoj chai.” His aunt immediately set a cup of tea in front of him as he sat down across from Felix, who watched him as he was chewing a bite of the bread, cheese and sausage he had stacked up together. “There, your tea.” 

“I made stuffed peppers. A favorite of your mama’s, you know,” she said casually, with an eye on Wolfgang as he reached for a piece of cheese and he paused there, midair.

“Yes, I remember,” he replied quietly, retracting his hand and ripping off a bite of the bread plain. Felix looked at him for explanation but Wolfgang didn’t know what he could offer right now. He had very clear memories of his mother, but they didn’t live that close to the surface of his mind. He’d recognized them by smell earlier, but in truth, he didn’t remember stuffed peppers as a favorite of hers. Instead, the thought of peppers led him to a very clear image of standing on a step stool next to her in their tiny East Berlin kitchen. He was trying to sculpt mountains and castles out of the mixture of herbed rice and ground beef in the bowl when he was supposed to be patting it into the hollowed out peppers. He raised his eyes slowly to his aunt’s face as if simultaneously to apologize and deny the need for apology.

“I remember that I used to help her prepare them,” he said finally. His aunt returned a thin, but proud smile. Now that he thought about it, although he had eaten stuffed peppers quite frequently when he was small, he had never really thought about why. 

“You know, your eyes are the same blue as hers,” she said with a satisfied, but mournful, sigh, looking at him intently. He gripped his napkin tightly under the table. His aunt kept finding little comparisons like this to point out. Wolfgang could only imagine that identifying the ways he reminded her of her family was meant positively, but there was a sadness to it as well. It almost seemed like an itemization of who he could have been given a different set of circumstances and he wasn’t sure what to do with that. “Well, let’s eat a little soup.” 

As she turned back to the counter, ladling generous portions of the okroshka she’d made yesterday into bowls, Felix leaned across the table to him with wide eyes and a twitch in his lip, loud-whispering, “What was that about?”

“My mother,” Wolfgang said coolly, taking a sip of his tea. Felix nodded solemnly, saying nothing and taking another bite. Felix had never met her. He’d come along after she had already been gone for some time and found himself flattened and bloody half a heartbeat past the first time he’d made an offhanded joke about Wolfgang’s mother. He had never made another attempt.

It was the same blue of Nadia’s own eyes as well. That much extended through all of them. It was the one feature of his aunt’s that could set a needle in his heart reminding him of his mother at just a glance. Outside of that, his mother and her sister had never been in too much danger of being mistaken for each other, and time had furthered that effect. He wondered, looking at his aunt, if she offered any clues as to what his own mother would have looked like at this point in her life. His mother would have been 55 at this point, and her sister was a few years older. There was a tragic exhaustion that seemed to hang around her, but also the stolid resolve to keep pushing through the work of the everyday. 

She was no stranger to tragedy in her own right. Her son, Valya, seven years older than Wolfgang, had disappeared when he was about 15. It was after his mother was gone, but word had gotten to Wolfgang and his father through the mob umbilicus that kept them tied to family in Russia. He had envied his cousin at the time, trying to disappear several times himself. Nadia’s husband, his Dyadya Misha, had passed about three years ago after a sudden heart attack.

“I’m going to hang out at Lyudmila’s tonight. Do you want to come with me, kids?” Nadia offered as she stirred a spoonful of raspberry jam into her tea as they finished up dinner. 

“No, thanks,” Wolfgang replied gently. “I’m pretty tired. Felix and I will wash the dishes and then hang out and rest. We might go get a drink later.” 

“Okay, well I’ll be back by midnight,” she said. “Do you have a key?”

“No, I don’t,” Wolfgang replied, taking a sip of his own tea. His aunt clicked her tongue at him and thought for a minute. Even for the times when she sent him down to the store a few blocks down to pick up some small groceries, she had waved him away with excuses about why he wouldn’t need it. She disappeared busily into the living room. 

“What’s going on?” Felix asked, not bothering to whisper this time. “I heard my name. Are you planning to sell me into prostitution? Because if so, I think I’m up for it so long as it’s your aunt who’s buying.”

Wolfgang nearly spit tea out of his nose, managing to swallow before laughing quietly through his nose.

“Shh...I know she doesn’t speak any German, but you could at least wait until she leaves to make jokes like that. Some words are similar enough that it might make her suspicious,” he hissed under his breath, still trying not to laugh too loudly. “She’s finding us a key. She’s going over to Lyudmila’s. I said we’d wash the dishes and that we might go out to get a drink later.”

“Going out?” Felix asked with a suspiciously toothy smile. “A key?

“Where are you planning on going?” Nadia asked as she bustled in with a small, folded envelope. There was the line of interrogation he had anticipated. “Are you meeting anyone? When will you be back?”

“I don’t think we’ll go farther than Pivnaya, not far from the metro station. We should be back by midnight, too. Like I said, I’m tired.”

The answer seemed to placate her, but she still felt the need to recommend three or four other places before handing over the key and getting ready for her own plans. Wolfgang finished his tea and started clearing the table as she talked. Felix fiddled with his tea, his face wearing the pleasantly attentive but blank expression, like he was watching a tennis game he only half cared about, that he’d developed for conversations between Wolfgang and his aunt that he didn’t feel like he could totally back out from.

“So, I found a place in Petersburg that has karaoke,” Felix announced as he dried the clean dishes Wolfgang handed him and stacked them on the table in front of him where he sat after Nadia had left.

“I said we’d be home by midnight. I really am tired,” Wolfgang shrugged apologetically.

“Since when does tired get in the way of party?” Felix protested. “It’s only like five, six stops down from us on the metro. You’ll have all the time in the world to make out with your imaginary Indian girlfriend or whatever it is you do in the bathroom later.” Technically, Felix had met Kala. He had called her up on Skype as part of his explanation of the connection, proof after a fashion, not long after Felix had woken up in his private hospital room. But Felix being Felix, he looked for ways to find a joke in everything.

Wolfgang’s head dropped and he laughed as he set down the dishcloth and plate he was holding and grabbed Felix in a headlock, scrubbing against his head with his wet knuckles.

“Hey! Why would you do that to your poor injured friend?” Felix protested, laughing himself. Wolfgang let him go and sat down across the table from him.

“I saw her today,” he said, his heart beginning to glow in remembering as he looked over at him, “while I was waiting for the bus.”

“Yeah? Did she think your fishy fishy smell was sexy?” Felix flashed a grin and Wolfgang swatted at him half-heartedly.

“No really, what was she up to?” Felix had taken the idea of Wolfgang’s connections in stride pretty well. He mocked it sometimes, almost in reflex, but he was always curious to hear where Wolfgang visited, what his people were doing.

“She had just gotten out of the movies with friends. They were getting a bite to eat by the beach,” Wolfgang recalled. Felix grunted thoughtfully.

“Cool,” Felix looked distantly forward for a minute before snapping into a sharp smile. “Did she have any of her hot friends with her?”

“Ha, I didn’t get a look at exactly who was there, other than her sister.” 

“That will do. So when you going to introduce me?” 

Wolfgang just chuckled under his breath in response. 

“Anyway, I’m not trying to be home by midnight for Kala. I told Tyotya Nadia I’d be home by then and, I don’t know, I guess I still feel like I’m proving myself to her.” 

“Okay, so what about karaoke means we have to be out all night? I mean, it’s not even starting to get dark out. It’s only,” he looked over at the clock on the wall, “Okay, so it’s almost 8:30 because the sun in Russia has weird-ass ideas, but that’s still at least three hours to play and still be back by whatever curfew you’re holding onto tonight. Come on, I haven’t really been out since before this whole thing.”

“What about when we went out to celebrate you getting out of the hospital?”

“You mean when I was still on so many boring hospital drugs I could barely even drink? How does that count as really going out? And besides, isn’t you not having to wake up as ass o’clock in the morning to haul fish reason enough to celebrate?”

“Ok, fine.” Wolfgang threw up his hands as he stood up from the table and headed back to the sink. There was no way he was arguing Felix out of this. He was right in this case - there was no good reason they shouldn’t be back before midnight. 

“So we go karaoke?” Felix’s eyebrows threatened to arch right up off of his face.

“Not until you finish drying those dishes, we don’t.” Wolfgang threw pulled a towel from the rack in front of him and threw it at Felix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to PreRaphaelites for keeping me on target in this segment and for thinking I should put in more about Uzbek food.


	6. Smoked Fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Did she not want to go to Germany?” 
> 
> “I don’t really know. We never talked about it. My father was,” the word ‘monster’ drifted through his head but didn’t quite communicate enough in the present moment, “not the kind of person who took ‘no’ for an answer. He barely took ‘yes’ for an answer. He simply did things.”
> 
> “Seems like my father. I don’t think he’s ever asked permission for anything in his life. Not seriously, at least.” Kolya snorted a laugh as he said it, but Wolfgang noticed an angry bitterness in the lines of his eyes, the angle he pulled his mouth.

Sweating in a freezing room is typically a sensation that makes it feel as though your body is at war with itself. The implicit contradiction of sweat clinging to parts of your skin while others sting with cold, breath hanging visibly in the air, leaves the body confused but feeling alive. Wolfgang thought that his particular situation made him more suited for this work than most.

He pulled the black knit cap off of his head and shoved it in the pocket of his insulated coveralls. He grabbed another crate sliding down the belt, stacking it on top of the one after it and hefting both onto the rest that were stacked on the pallet. 

Smoked fish right now. Wolfgang rarely bothered to read the crates but with this he didn’t have to. The warm, earthy tang of smoked fish pushed past its packaging and even overpowered the pervasive stench of disinfectant and whatever else was left after initial processing filleted away the sweetest parts of the fish.

He and Kolya had a rhythm down almost to the breath, stepping around each other to the belt and back to the stack. As boring as the work was, there was something satisfying about it when the movement fell together just so, like musicians falling into careful syncopation.

It never lasted that long, though, and soon there was a pause in the flow of boxes coming through. As he stood still for a moment, the chill of the refrigerated air settled into the sweat that had beaten through the skin of his forehead. 

“Aren’t you cold?” Wolfgang asked as Kolya paused to unzip his insulated coverall to the waist and tie the sleeves together in front of him. A colorful half-sleeve of tattoos peeked out of his white tee shirt. Wolfgang briefly scrutinized the tattoos, relieved to notice that they bore no resemblance to the ink most of the men in his family wore. 

“I’m from fucking Siberia, man,” Kolya laughed dismissively, the almond slant of his eyes crinkling gleefully. “We go swimming when it’s this fucking temperature where I’m from.”

Wolfgang looked at him, trying to figure out precisely how much exaggeration there was in that last statement. Russians didn’t tend to fuck around with the cold that way for the most part.

“So you didn’t grow up in here in Peter?” He asked instead of his actual questions about subzero swimming.

“Nah, Yakutsk. I wasn’t joking about Siberia. Though, interestingly, Yakutsk isn’t in Siberia.”

“No?”

“No, it’s more like the Fifth Circle of Hell,” Kolya spat with comedic bitterness. “But officially, the Siberian District doesn’t go that far east. Most Russians talk about Siberia like it’s anything east of, like, Nizhniy Novgorod. But you didn’t grow up here either. What’s your story? _Deutschland, ja?_ ”

Wolfgang nodded, snorting at Kolya’s awkwardly overdone German pronunciation. “But my mother was originally from here. Though it was always Leningrad to her, even after the change.”

The boxes began sliding in again and the two began their synchronized dance from belt to pallet again.

“She’s got to be pretty young to be one of the Leningrad people, though. I mean, she can’t have been alive during the war.”

“No, but her parents were both children here during the blockade. I guess the name meant a lot to them because of that. But I don’t think that the war really was a big part of it for her. I think it was more being taken away and wanting to be able to come home to the place you left. ‘Leningrad is where I was born,’ she used to say, ‘if there is no Leningrad, then I don’t know where I come from.’”

“Did she not want to go to Germany?” 

“I don’t really know. We never talked about it. My father was,” the word ‘monster’ drifted through his head but didn’t quite communicate enough in the present moment, “not the kind of person who took ‘no’ for an answer. He barely took ‘yes’ for an answer. He simply did things.”

“Seems like my father. I don’t think he’s ever asked permission for anything in his life. Not seriously, at least.” Kolya snorted a laugh as he said it, but Wolfgang noticed an angry bitterness in the lines of his eyes, the angle he pulled his mouth. It wasn’t far from his own reaction to thinking of his father. They continued loading boxes in silence for a few moments. The silence began to weigh down on Wolfgang’s thoughts.

“Where in Germany did you live?” Kolya asked, and there was a certain relief.

“Berlin.”

“So, what are you doing here, then?” Kolya asked and Wolfgang narrowed his eyes as he sized up his chatty coworker and his question. “I mean, if I could choose between here and Berlin, I’d choose Berlin every time.” The question seemed friendly enough; he was probably just trying to make conversation, to break silence which had become uncomfortable. But the question couldn’t be ignored, and any real answer opened a certain vulnerability.

“My brother, he got into some trouble with the wrong people and got badly hurt. It wasn’t safe in Berlin, so we’re here with my aunt until things cool down.”

“You mean both of your aunt,” Kolya corrected him with a smirk and Wolfgang fеlt a nervous twinge as he tried to figure out what Kolya meant calling that out, as if looking for holes in his story.

“Of course,” he agreed uncomfortably.

“How did you end up here? Do you have family?” Wolfgang asked, looking to deflect the conversation away from himself.

“Fuck, no. I’m here because it’s far away from my family. But, uh, I actually came here to study at the conservatory. I mean, that was my excuse for getting out of Yakutsk,” Kolya explained almost apologetically, and Wolfgang paused for a moment in surprise. 

“The conservatory?”

“Yeah, I play the oboe. Or, I played the oboe.”

“Isn’t the conservatory only for people who are really super good? Wasn’t there an easier way to get out?” Wolfgang asked asked a little incredulously.

“You’ve never met my father.”

“I suppose I haven’t,” Wolfgang conceded, a certain cool disgust rising in his throat. “I did meet mine, though. If I thought playing an instrument might help me get away from him, I suppose I might have tried that at one point. He wasn’t too supportive of that sort of thing, though. One of his many talents was making you feel like whatever you did was garbage. You could be the best in the fucking world, and he would still think you were shit. I suspect if I had ended up at your conservatory, he still wouldn’t have been impressed.”

“That’s the truth,” Kolya shook his head and put down another stack of boxes. “I got accepted both here and in Moscow. He wanted me to go to Moscow, so I could stay with my grandparents, but I was able to convince him that the one here was more prestigious.”

“You have family in Moscow?” Wolfgang asked, surprised given the emphasis Kolya had put on being stuck in Yakutsk.

“Yeah, my mom’s originally from there. She’s Russian. My dad’s Sakha from Yakutsk, head to foot, but he did his surgeon training in Moscow back in the 70s. Met my mom there and managed to trap her into getting married and moving to Yakutsk. Like, you’d think that at least she’d have some fucking say there.”

“How’d he manage that?”

“She already had a kid - my sister Sasha - with some other _mudak_ who’d disappeared. He knocked her up again and offered to take in both of them. I’m sure going to Yakutsk didn’t come up until it was too late.”

“Class,” Wolfgang drawled sarcastically.

“Such class,” Kolya shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“Do you have any other brothers or sisters?”

“Yeah, two more sisters, Tina and Sveta, besides Sasha. I’m the youngest.”

“And they’re all in Yakutsk still?”

“Yeah, though they’re all married now. You?” 

“No, nobody else.” He said and then, remembering the slip Kolya had pointed out earlier, caught himself, adding, “Except Felix.” 

Kolya still seemed to have caught the hesitation and responded with the same knowing smirk he’d offered earlier.

“I’m still having trouble picturing you in a fancy suit, you know, with an orchestra,” he said. Kolya’s long, black hair was pulled up in a knot on the back of his head, a couple rings in each ear, tattoos on casual display.

“Yeah, well, uh, so did they, I suppose. So did I, after a certain point.” Kolya’s eyes glazed as his words drifted away from him for a moment. He set down the boxes he was carrying on the pallet and stood, still and distant. His face cleared a moment later. “Anyway, point is they’re a bunch of _mudaki_ there, not worth the time. Mostly. This look suits me better than the penguin suit ever did, anyway.”

“Do you still play at all?” Wolfgang asked warmly. There seemed to be more of a story there, but it didn’t seem worth pressing at the moment. 

“I mostly play bass now. I’m in a band called Simargl. We play kind of a dark, prog-metal style with some math-rock influences. Like Opeth or Gojira or Russian Circles, but with a little more Stravinsky thrown in.” 

“Stravinsky? Like the composer?” In truth, it was the only one of the names Wolfgang had recognized, and hearing it on that list seemed almost comically out of place. 

“Stravinsky would have completely been a metal dude if he was around today!” Kolya insisted. “A lot of the classic composers would have. Wagner, Grieg, Bach.”

The boxes had stopped sliding through again.

“Really, you think Bach?”

“Eh, fine, Bach might be more of a strict prog dude,” Kolya said thoughtfully. “Hey, we have a concert next Saturday at Arctica. You and your, uh, brother should come.”

“Thanks for the invitation, but Felix is still recovering. In general, he’s more of a metal fan than I am, but he can only stand for so long, so I don’t know how ready he is for a concert like that.” 

“Oh, well the show’s not till 10 so maybe you both can come over earlier to have dinner with me and my, ah, _kvartirant_ , Yuri.” With that, Wolfgang suddenly understood why Kolya had so closely scrutinized the way he’d talked about Felix. It was something of a relief. He wasn’t sure whether to correct him just yet. The whole of the truth was, perhaps, more revealing in a way he wasn’t ready to expose. Not here, at least. Besides, it wasn’t as if Kolya was the first person to suggest that he and Felix were more than friends. In truth, they were more than friends, just not in the way Kolya thought. And Kolya was certainly not suggesting it as an excuse to start a fight, as some of those people had.

“I’ll ask Felix and get back to you,” Wolfgang replied.

Along the stark back wall of the room, Wolfgang noticed Ivan Stepanovich, the warehouse manager, leading a woman with short, dark hair, sharply-tailored business attire and a large metal briefcase towards the stairs that led up to the next level, where most of the packaging happened. As they started up the open-grated metal staircase, he noticed that she was wearing black rubber boots that seemed out of sync with the rest of her outfit. 

She had come through the warehouse already once this week. He had been working here just less than two weeks and had seen her come through several times. He checked the large clock face on the far wall. She had come just before a break before, too. Wolfgang didn’t always notice when he was casing the patterns of a place. It was almost instinct. The people working here who wore clothes worth keeping clean rarely left their offices during the day, but he thought he had at least a visual inventory of all of those people. Her, he had only seen here, crossing the warehouse floor in her rubber boots. Now that he thought of it, he hadn’t seen Ivan any closer than the door if he could help it. Except when he was escorting her through.

“You know her?” Wolfgang asked Kolya, leaning against a pallet.

“Which one?”

Wolfgang nodded towards the stairs just in time to see Ivan holding the chipped gunmetal fire door open for her as if it were the entrance to the Belmond Grand Hotel downtown. He snickered under his breath at the sight.

“Oh, Boots? Not really. She comes through a couple times a week.”

“Does she work here? Is she Ivan’s boss or,” Wolfgang trailed off, raised his eyes suggestively, “Someone?” Kolya responded with a throaty, conspiratorial chuckle as he wiped his forehead with his hat and then slipped it back on.

“I don’t know. Never really thought about it. I always figured she was from corporate or whatever. But, uh, now that you mention it.” 

“He truly wants to impress her for one reason or another, no?”

“That’s our Ivanushka,” Kolya snickered. A disgusted expression and a shudder followed a moment later. “Ugh, man, that’s a visual I definitely didn’t need.” Ivan was an oddly built man, thin and tall - probably two meters in height - but with a round, doughy face and wispy blond hair. Despite being the head of the warehouse, perhaps because of it, he was most frequently sighted peeking nervously around corners and doorframes as if afraid of being spotted.

“Well, I doubt this behemoth is going to throw up any more fish in the next three minutes. You want to have a smoke before lunch?” 

“No, thanks.” In truth, part of Wolfgang lurched hopefully at the idea, as it always did when someone offered. Someone or another always seemed to, given any kind of break here. In quite a number of ways, this was the wrong place to quit smoking. He would never have described it as something he was doing for Kala. In fact, she’d probably take issue if it were described that way. She hadn’t asked him to. She didn’t even do more than laugh when he had drunkenly confessed to sneaking a couple out with Felix last weekend. And still, somehow, he knew he wouldn’t be trying if it weren’t for her.

He watched Kolya strut purposefully towards the double doors to the hallway that led outside, and then headed for a different set towards the cafeteria.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   * _kvartirant_ \- flatmate or lodger; typically denotes a much more businesslike relationship than implied by Kolya.
>   * _mudak_ \- I suppose I could translate this as “dumbass” or “asshole” but it wouldn’t cover the full spectrum of usage and meaning here. It literally means ‘testicle’ but I’ve never heard it used that way. “Fuckbrain” sounds about right, even though I don’t think it’s a word.
>   * Sakha - indigenous name for the North Asian people more commonly known by their Russian ethnonym, Yakut. Most Sakha people live in the Semi-Autonomous Sakha Republic in Russia, just east of the official Siberian District.
>   * the blockade: the Siege of Leningrad (see linked note below)
>   * About the name of the city: The city returned to its pre-WWI name, Sankt-Peterburg, in 1991 after having been Leningrad since the death of Lenin in 1924. The change was supported by 55% of voting residents, which is not as much of a majority as is often presented, though people voting in favor of Leningrad weren't necessarily doing so out of love for Lenin. More here: [On the many names of Санкт-Петербург](http://kinoglowworm.tumblr.com/post/137903700510/on-the-many-names-of-%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BA%D1%82-%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B1%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B3)
> 



	7. Comfortable Clothes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the rest of the cluster in view, the space where Will would have been ached like a newly-empty tooth socket. The group stood at a lull as the tension slipped like a cloud, settling around each of them and into that empty space.

“It just makes me uncomfortable. He’s not safe. I mean, he’s very safe, but who else is included in that besides him and his daughter can change like this.” Capheus leaned over and kissed the skin of Sun’s collarbone from where he was curled against her. 

“You forget that the only reason he’s so safe right now is because of me. Because of this.” Sun sighed and kicked the light cotton blanket off of her toes. The warm night clung to her skin as the high-pitched whirring of crickets fought it out with the sluggish sounds of traffic in the street below. 

“I don’t. Really, I don’t. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but you don’t know his type like I do.” Capheus shrugged against the softly ribbed gray cotton of the tank top she wore to bed.

“Do you know his type?” Sun threw back coldly, pulling her arm out from under him and resting both hands behind her head, her eyes fixed on the flat white ceiling above them as if she could see through it.

“I know more than I’d like,” he replied softly and she heard him shift onto his side a little farther away. She could still feel his eyes on her. Up until recently, up until she had thrust him onto Kabaka’s radar, Capheus had only had to contend with the frayed hems of the city’s organized crime. She sighed and rubbed the side of her face before rolling her head slightly to look at him. 

“I’m sorry, I know,” she said. “But as far as I’m concerned, if he already has photos of you and me and he knows where we live, what more can he do? Why hide? What more threat can he pose?” Even as she said it, she felt unsure of what she said. Capheus had been broadcasting a new, deep-set unease since he had dropped Amondi off today. Kabaka’s request for her to teach Amondi self-defense skills couldn’t explain all of it, and the surveillance, well, that wasn’t news. 

Sun tried to focus on Capheus’s thoughts. She was fairly attuned to his emotional affect and had fairly free access to his memories, but couldn’t necessarily make the connections between them that he did unless he pulled the memories to the surface. There was something blocked off behind it. Sun could feel the edges of it, but couldn’t quite grasp the thought. She had never felt him shield his thoughts from her like this.

She found herself resting in the same pose on Kala’s bed in her room in Mumbai. Kala was sitting on the other side in her delicate green pajamas, idly braiding her hair as she stared into space with a soft, plaintive smile. 

Kala turned around as she sensed a weight on the bed. As she recognized Sun, her face twisted inquisitively.

“Not who you were expecting this time of night?” Sun smirked and Kala turned away, blushing a shit-faced grin, focusing her attention at the end of her braid, twisting it around her index finger. 

“Oh, stop,” Kala’s smile opened and she let go of the dark curl wrapped around her finger as she turned her body to face Sun, one leg folded under her on the wrinkled peach percale of the sheets. “I’m always glad to see you.”

“To be honest, I’m not quite sure what brought me here either,” Sun said, rolling over and propping up her head on her hand.

“What’s happening? Is everything okay?” Kala asked, her forehead bending as she sensed Sun’s unease.

“It’s hard to say at the moment,” Sun said, and Kala cocked her head nervously. “There is something making Capheus anxious and he has some kind of block built up around those thoughts. It’s not like him. You know, he’s usually like an open book. All I can tell is it’s something to do with Kabaka.”

Sun felt Kala’s understanding stumble on the last word, the name striking a sick feeling she couldn’t quite explain. Sun looked Kala directly in the eye as she called to memory the vision of Kabaka wearing a solemn expression and a crisp white apron dotted scarlet as a man screamed in the background. The memory of the day in the warehouse that Kabaka had been the prisoner, the machete’s weight in her hand and the threat of a pistol just outside her peripheral vision. The smell of sweat, blood and cologne. Kala winced, biting the inside of her lip, and then looked away. Sun also called to mind the image of a man in a well-cut charcoal three-piece, smiling warmly as he took his daughter’s hand, thoroughly engrossed in whatever she had to tell him.

“This is the employer Capheus was so conflicted about.” 

Sun nodded. “He wants me to teach his daughter to defend herself, but I don’t think that fully explains Capheus’s concern.”

“What do you think?” Kala asked grimly. 

“About the job offer or about what’s bothering Capheus?”

“Either.” 

“I can take care of myself. He knows that. They both do, I think.”

“How much does Kabaka know about you? Obviously, he knows something about your fighting skills. Has he met you?”

“Not in person, so I’m not sure precisely what he knows. I think he’s mostly heard about me from his daughter, but he does keep,” she paused, picturing the richly colored flower arrangement that had arrived from Kabaka mere days after their move, “notes. On Capheus, at least. I told you about the housewarming gift, yes?”

Kala responded with a thin-lipped nod. _“Furaha inahitaji cha kufanya, cha kupenda na cha kutumaini. Congratulations on bringing all three together,”_ the card that came with the flowers had read. The first part was a proverb in Swahili, “Happiness requires something to do, something to love and something to hope for.” It seemed to reference the family they had cobbled together, but remained somewhat cryptic, if perhaps affectionately so.

“So I’m not certain.”

“Does it bother you more that Kabaka might know something compromising or that Capheus won’t tell you what it might be?”

Sun took an audibly deep breath as she weighed the two thoughts. She shifted, sitting up, straight-backed and cross-legged across from Kala near the head of the bed. Her friend’s habit of turning her complaints back at her as queries was annoyingly on point.

“I just need to know what the situation is, so I can prepare myself for what might be coming. I don’t like guessing unnecessarily.”

Kala sighed and nodded. Sun noticed they were back in her own bedroom. Capheus rested, curled gently on his side between them with a distant, worried look on his face. Sun couldn’t tell in which place her words had been spoken. Perhaps it was both.

“It might be nothing,” he said quietly, his shoulders shrugging apologetically. “I didn’t,” he sighed, “I didn’t want you to worry if it turned out to be nothing more than coincidence.”

Sun’s face became stone as her stomach churned through possibilities: a reference to her case, to her company. 

Kala spoke before Sun could put the words together, “It’s always more work to hide such things. Secret problems are more heartache for everyone involved. There’s no need to hold on to it all on your own.” 

Capheus pushed himself up to a sitting position next to Sun on the bed.

“Mr. Kabaka wanted to know more about Susan Park’s background and how she had ended up in Nairobi, so I told him the story about how she was traveling around the world after the death of her father.” He looked over at Sun, finally making eye contact with her. The rest of the room disappeared for moment as they were both silent. Sun felt his heartbeat, syncopating with her own in rapid rhythm, as he began to let her back in. His eyes darted back to Kala. “And then he wanted to talk more about traveling. He told me that he had only visited two cities far away from here and the two far away cities he had visited were Mumbai and London.” He paused again, looking for recognition in both their faces. 

Sun felt the stone of her face creep into her veins, now almost wishing Kabaka had made reference to Korea alone. A threat just to her, about her case, she could handle. This threat was larger than that, though. She felt guilty for assuming that it had related just to her.

“Again, it could just be coincidence. Many people from Nairobi visit London. Many have family there. With Mumbai, it’s the same.”

“It’s true. I mean, it’s not like they’re obscure, remote travel destinations.” Nomi stepped forward dressed for work in a gray pencil skirt and a blue-striped cardigan. She was holding a cup of coffee and her long hair was held up with a pen.

“Besides, if he had ulterior motives, it wouldn’t be to his advantage to reveal that connection. He is certainly smarter than that,” Lito said from in front of the mirror, towels tucked into the collar of the elaborately embroidered costume shirt he wore. “At least, he seems to be.”

“He plays a defensive game, whatever his angle is,” Wolfgang said as he settled against the wall right across from where Kala sat, his arms and legs crossed in boxer briefs.

“I mean, I think it still merits further investigation. Either he’s up to something or he’s more or less friendly. And what’s a little surveillance among friends?” Nomi smiled and shrugged playfully. “I mean, that’s clearly what he thinks.” 

“Does he have security cameras inside or around the house?” Nomi asked. Sun looked at Capheus. He nodded his head, lips pursed thoughtfully.

“There’s at least one outside, pointed at the driveway. I haven’t actually been inside the house, so I’m not sure about anything there. But given the kind of security he keeps for himself, I would be very surprised if that were the only one.” 

“Okay, well even if we just have that one, we can still get a pretty good sense of who’s coming and going. We’ll just need to get in the building to get some of the network information first. That should be pretty easy once your teaching gig starts. They’ll probably just give you the wireless password if you ask.” Nomi turned to Sun as she finished, the question of teaching or not teaching sealing itself over neatly.

“Are you saying you can just pull up the security footage online?” Wolfgang asked.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Nomi shrugged and nodded with a smirk. “There’s a couple steps from here to there, but, yeah.”

Wolfgang shook his head and rubbed his eye with a chuckle.

“What?” Nomi asked.

“Nothing. I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said and yawned, shifting against the wall and finally taking the seat on the bed next to Kala he’d been eyeing since he stepped in. “I just wish I’d met you earlier.”

Nomi giggled and rolled her eyes at him, “Sorry, my fleet-fingered friend. Stylish though it may be, I put my black hat in storage long ago.”

Sun saw Nomi bite her lip as she thought about it though, and felt a twinge of playful nostalgia radiating out. She felt her chest unclutch just a tiny bit, and she took a deep breath, slowly. 

Riley’s presence flickered into the room. She sat quietly on the floor, leaning against the wall on her own. She was hugging her flannel-clad knees in, her head resting on them turned towards the group. 

With the rest of the cluster in view, the space where Will would have been ached like a newly-empty tooth socket. The group stood at a lull as the tension slipped like a cloud, settling around each of them and into that empty space.

“How is he?” It was Kala who finally asked, though it was clear she spoke for everyone else present. They all knew already, on some level. His consciousness intermittently slipped into their common awareness as he woke up from his propofol cloud. Kala was working on a drug to try to block the connection without him having to be unconscious all the time, but progress was moving slowly. She’d had to do a large amount of original research into how their own brain chemistry differed from neurotypical people, using herself as a test subject and trying to keep the work off the record as much as possible.

The beige of the walls in Nairobi paled into the coolly fluorescent white of the blank room where Riley was. The curtains in the room were drawn to keep what was outside the windows as much of a secret as possible, but the warm brilliance of the sun outside on its way in or out of the day forced its way in around the corners of the thick, white drapes. 

“About the same.” Riley sat near the head of the bed, crouched in the same protective way next to Will. “He doesn’t find him every day when he’s awake.” She reached down to stroke the soft, dark beard that had grown in during the time he had been asleep with the side of her index finger. “But the longer he’s awake, the more likely it become; the less safe it is.”

The rest of him unstirring, Will’s head turned into her hand. She bit her lip and smiled bittersweetly down at him.

Something about that look registered deep inside Sun and she reached out to squeeze Capheus’s hand beside her. He looked over at her with much the same pained, loving look in his eyes.

Sun couldn’t quite imagine being in Riley’s position, for as much as she could empathize with it in a way she wouldn’t have thought possible just two months ago. She had inventoried a wide range of different kinds of isolation over the years, but being confined with it the way that Riley was hadn’t come up for her, not even in solitary cell in Korea. The feeling of it twisted in her stomach.

Will was awake for an hour or two a day to eat, wash and take care of other basic needs, but the group pushed to keep away as much as possible during that time. The less information he had, the less of a liability he was, even to himself. The others visited with Riley sometimes while he was asleep, but even with her they were cautious about revealing too many details or of asking her for too many. This small, white room was part of a series of small, white rooms that ran together in their minds; that wouldn’t end until Whispers could no longer learn anything from being inside Will’s head.

“I have some news that might help move things along here,” said Lito, walking over to the small table by the stove. “I have an opportunity to work on a film shooting in Mumbai.”

Sun saw Kala’s eyes grow very large and had to contain a chuckle. Wolfgang didn’t bother concealing it, laughing as he fell backwards onto the bed, pulling her with him just shy of Will’s legs. She pushed him away as she sat back up, fixed on Lito, flushed.

“Who is,” she began and then stopped herself. “Is it,” she tried and abandoned again. Sun did start laughing quietly at this point. “When would you start?” She finally completed, her wide eyes betraying her calm expression.  


Sun even saw Riley crack a smile at this exchange.

“If all goes well, filming will begin in just under a month,” Lito replied, butter-smooth as ever as he ignored Kala’s fannish garble. “But I had hoped to come a little earlier to become more familiar with the area and the language. They are hoping for me to be able to do many of my lines in Hindi.” His impish grin bloomed.

“So it is one of our films,” she said.

“It’s something of a co-production. They see a lot of potential for crossover between the two markets, and, you know, they may be onto something. But the opportunity seemed,” he looked up, his lips pressing out, “expedient.”

“And will your, uh, bodyguard be joining you for this trip?” Nomi asked hopefully.

“My bodyguard cannot get so much time off of work at the library,” Lito replied, “but he will be joining us for part of the time. We are planning a week in Goa before filming begins. We have a villa on the beach reserved. Private, so I hope you will all come visit in whatever way you can.” 

Riley’s face lit up. “Goa is so beautiful. You’ll love it there.”

“You’ve been?” Lito asked.

“Yeah, I, ah, played Sunburn there last year,” she said, looking shyly at her feet as she unfolded herself for the first time since they’d appeared. “You know, not one of the main stages or anything, but it paid for my vacation there. It was magical in a way unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been.”

The reminder shocked Sun a little bit. Riley had come to be defined in her mind - in their mind - by her flight from Iceland and by her dedication to Will in his condition (and by the varied kinds of pancakes she seemed to make for any occasion) such that she’d almost forgotten that Riley Blue was a name of note as a DJ. 

It seemed so long ago. That time, where Riley was a DJ, where Will was a beat cop trying to do right by the people of his city, where she herself had been CFO of a major company seemed almost a different world. Sun often reflected on how much had changed for her, but missed how much had changed for the rest of the cluster since their awakening to each other only about a month and a half previous. She shook her head at the degree to which she still managed to focus her attention on herself despite the almost literal flood of available input outside of that. 

Like so many other moments she’d experienced in the last six or so weeks, it was a humbling reminder of how big the world was and how small a piece in it she was.

Sun looked around the room, but her eyes settled back on Capheus, reclined on the bed in his navy blue shorts. He held out his hand to her and she accepted it. As he pulled her in next to him, she realized as her head touched the pillow that they were back in their bed in Nairobi, with no one else in view.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly as their foreheads touched, “I should have been upfront with you about what worried me. It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable. In fact, I think it’s the opposite. I worry that I’m not capable enough and I want to do something for you.”

“There are so many different things you do for me every day. Protection feels like the only thing I’m capable of these days and even then I don’t have much opportunity to do that,” Sun said as their legs tangled together and her hand came to rest on his shoulder. “It’s why this teaching job is so important to me.”

“Mm,” Capheus hummed acknowledgment as his head dipped forward almost as if to nod. “Well, I promise that protection is not the only relevant skill you’ve brought with you.” His hand ran the length of her back and then returned to lightly trace the skin on the spot at the base of her spine that he had quickly learned could make her melt.

An echo of pleasure returned from far away that made them both flush and they knew they weren’t alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, gang's all here now, because snow days are magical things.
> 
> Now that it's open, the worms are all attempting to crawl out of their can all at once.


	8. White Belt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Before they reached the stairs, Amondi came bouncing down, already dressed in crisp white dobok, a white belt tied lopsidedly around her waist. It was a moment before Sun registered that she hadn’t mentioned anything about belts to Amondi before - that she must have done her own research on which one was appropriate for a beginner like herself. Dressed in her enthusiasm, the sight of Amondi brought a warmth and pride that Sun hadn’t anticipated and a smile, unguarded, burst from her face."

A light breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees around the building as Sun waited for her ride. Close to the high-stacked block of their recently-constructed apartment building, a few spindly saplings were anchored protectively to the ground. Not far, though, was an older collection of trees - croton, muthiga, oak and some others - stretching out their green-feathered fingers, wide and high, over the ground. Some of them had probably overseen this area since the time when it hadn’t been much more than a swampy waystation. 

The perfectly manicured black 4x4 rolled up outside the building a few minutes after one. Sun stood up and looked at the vehicle, unsure whether she should open the door or if the driver expected to do that for her. Other people’s drivers seemed to. Or at least they had in Seoul. After standing awkwardly for a few seconds, she reached forward and pulled open the rear passenger door and slid in with the backpack she’d been taking to the gym lately.

Sun settled in quietly. She looked up and caught the driver’s eye in the rearview; his gaze slid quickly back to the road. She’d hoped the kind of staid professional demeanor of Kabaka’s field would prevent her from the extended small talk most folks she’d met in Nairobi seemed to expect. Small talk had always left her feeling drained, and the guarded sort of small talk required here doubly so.

She pulled her phone out of her bag and began idly thumbing through the frontpage of _Dong-A Ilbo_ as she felt the car start to move. It felt so familiar that she was almost surprised to see the tips of Nairobi’s Central Business District out her window in the distance rather than Seoul’s skyline when she looked up a few minutes later. 

Korean news had been quiet on her case, her company, her family for a while now. She couldn’t imagine that news anywhere else would be weighing in on it. As much of her was relieved as disappointed by the silence on the topic. She wasn’t sure precisely what news she hoped to see, other than her brother brought to justice on his own selfish stupidity. She couldn’t imagine, though, that it would come without damage to the company, especially without her there to pick up the mantle, or at least the pieces, to bring the company forward. She hadn’t found herself able to completely cut the connection she felt to the company. The lack of news ultimately seemed a mixed blessing. 

When she looked across the seat, Nomi was there, looking out the other window over the city as the road climbed into the highlands overlooking the city center below. She turned her head to look at Sun and gave her a sleepy smile. Nomi reached over and gave Sun’s hand a reassuring squeeze. And with that they were standing in Nomi’s kitchen as a teakettle rumbled gently on the stove, hot but not yet boiling. A dim light next to the stove threw the only light in the room.

“Did you stay up all this time to access the cameras with me?” Sun asked as Nomi scooped coffee grounds into a french press.

“No, I just set an alarm so I’d be up when you got to the house. You want some?” She asked, gesturing at the coffee with the carved wooden scoop. 

“No, thanks,” Sun said and yawned herself as she leaned against the counter, folding her arms. “I’ll take some tea, though, since you’re boiling water.”

“Where are we, anyway?” Nomi asked as they looked out the window of the 4x4, squinting against the bright afternoon.

Sun shrugged her shoulders and sniffed the air for the scent of coffee, pulling her back to San Francisco, where Nomi pushed a small wicker basket of assorted teas in colorful packets towards her.

“This isn’t the route Capheus usually takes to Kabaka’s house, but he almost never goes straight there from home. I’ve never been out this way myself.” Sun thought, focusing on Capheus’s mental layout of the city as she squinted down the hill at the Central Business District. “He mentioned some construction downtown, so maybe we’re going this way to avoid it. It’s pretty, though.”

They were both jerked back to attention in the kitchen as the kettle began to sing. Nomi rushed over to pull it off the heat and quiet it before it woke Amanita. She pulled a mug out for Sun and poured her a cup of hot water before filling up her french press. 

“I’m still working on trying to wrap up your brother, by the way. I haven’t dropped that yet,” Nomi said off-handedly as she stirred the grounds into the water, looking up as she tapped the spoon on the glass rim. She paused to start a timer on her phone.

Sun looked up without saying anything, pausing in her inspection of the different teas.

“I don’t want to give him credit where it isn’t due - the patterns in the accounts are too erratic for that - but he seems to have taken a nickel and dime approach that makes him hard to pin down for it. It’s like he’s stealing change out of his dad’s wallet to buy candy, but on a corporate scale.”

Sun rolled her eyes, “That sounds like him. Only when it was candy money from father, he never had to steal it. He only had to ask.” She ripped open the corner of the tea packet she was holding and sniffed at it idly. Satisfied, she ripped open the rest of it and dangled the bag into the water. “I’m pretty sure he also stole out of father’s wallet, too. Nothing sophisticated about it. I don’t know that it ever occurred to him that some things were not for his particular use.”

Sun reflexively cracked her knuckles and stretched her neck. Nomi chuckled.

“I just realized I talked about him in the past tense, like he was the one who was dead.”

“It’s not far off from it, in a way,” said Nomi and her mind became something like a silent slideshow of uncomfortable family photos.

“Things would be simpler if he was,” Sun sniffed. “I should want terrible things to happen to him. Sometimes I do. But most of the time I just don’t care.”

“He’s really not worth your mental energy that way. I know leaving home behind isn’t always easy, but it pretty neatly excises you from the vast majority of that kind of self-absorbed bullshit.” Nomi’s phone lit up as the timer went off. She pushed the plunger on the french press slowly.

“If it weren’t for the company, ignoring him would be easy. Is it wrong that I care more about what happens to the company than what happens to him?” Sun asked, picking up her tea and letting the fruit-scented steam dance on her face. Nomi poured out a cup of coffee for herself.

“No,” Nomi replied plainly. “Not at all. There’s a lot of you caught up in there.” Nomi scooped a spoonful of sugar into her coffee, looking down into the cup contemplatively as she stirred. “There’s a lot of your family caught up in there, too.” 

Sun winced at the thought.

“My father and I - I think we both spent more time in those offices than we did where we lived. After mother died, I rarely saw him anywhere else. I think we connected better there than we did anywhere else. Which I guess, in all honesty, still isn’t saying much.”

“And your brother?” Nomi asked, her lip curled knowingly.

Sun shook her head and sighed. She took a sip of her tea. The warm tartness of honeyed peach took on a bitter aftertaste as Nomi sipped her coffee.

“You just kinda wish you could snap your fingers and have him pop out of existence,” Nomi said and Sun chuckled agreement into her tea. “It’s like that for me with my, well, with both my parents, I guess. You don’t know what I would give to just be able to go home and sit on the couch with my sister and the dog and eat popcorn and watch _Sailor Moon_. And for that not to have to be some kind of a radical statement.”

“I didn’t know you had a dog,” said Sun, the memory of a faceful of soft, white fur leaping to mind.

“Yeah, Megs, er, Nutmeg,” Nomi replied, “She’s a labradoodle.” The word didn’t register, but Sun smiled as she remembered being tackled by a shaggy dog the color of old straw, the dog’s whole body one muscular wiggle. “She was still basically a puppy the last time I saw her.”

“She’s still alive?” Sun asked hopefully. Nomi nodded, her lips pulled in tautly between her teeth.

“Your sister, she’s okay with your...you? Not like your parents?” 

“You mean is she okay with having a sister instead of a brother? Hell, yeah. She said she always would have rather had a sister. That she wished she had known earlier, so she could start stealing my clothes,” Nomi laughed, but her laughter trailed off. Sun sensed the weight that Nomi carried as she thought about it.

“I’ve had that thought before,” Sun nodded. “Not about the clothes, but wishing my brother was actually a sister. I can’t imagine Jung-ki would be so...whatever he is if he were a girl. But I think I just always wanted him to be something other than who he was. So that’s quite different - almost the opposite of the case with your sister.”

Nomi smiled and nodded sadly, sipping her coffee.

“How often do you get to see her, or,” Sun paused as Nomi’s memories of her sister percolated through her mind. “You don’t get to see her, do you?”

“Not in person,” Nomi shook her head and took another sip of her coffee. “When I was in the hospital, when she and my mother were there, that was the first time I’d seen Teagan in person in seven years. She was just starting high school, back then. I mean, she’s in college now, so we have more opportunities to talk. Her parents though, or, our parents, I guess, they won’t let her come visit.” She sighed. “As long as they’re paying for things for her, they’ll never let it happen. I don’t know if it’s more to protect her or to punish me. Or both. It’s been so long, I don’t think even they know at this point.”

“Do you think there’s anything you could do to convince them to let her come see you?”

“Is there anything you could do to make your brother pull his head out of his spoiled ass?” Nomi spat back with an acrid sharpness. “Honestly, I’m not the one with shit to figure out in all this. You can change what you think, but you can’t change who you are. As long as they believe that what they think is what they are, there’s literally nothing I can do to change that.”

“I’m sorry,” Sun said, sheepish and a little stunned. “I should have been more thoughtful before asking something like that.”

“No, I know. You’d like to think logic and honesty would work, but, well…with some people.”

Sun looked down into her tea and nodded quietly, thinking of the last time she saw her father.

“I can’t say it’s the same for your brother. It sounds like his problem is more in what he does than what he is. It’s unclear how much thinking enters into it,” Nomi said with a snort.

“No,” Sun broke in, “There’s only so far you can pull the two apart.” 

Nomi and Sun both jerked gently and their attention was drawn to the bright midday light of Nairobi, where the 4x4 had just pulled around the front of Kabaka’s expansive villa. Karen, the suburb where he lived, was almost completely on the opposite side of the city from where she and Capheus lived in Ruaka. Though, possibly ironically, Karen was much closer to where they had lived in Kibera than the relatively modest apartment building where they lived now. 

Sun offered a quick _asante_ to the driver as she stepped down onto the light-colored pebble gravel in front of the house. She scanned the face of the building for the camera Capheus had mentioned and quickly found it, mounted to inspect people arriving at the door. She looked up at it briefly before becoming concerned that it might seem suspicious for her to be staring at the camera.

She pushed open the door and stepped in, realizing Nomi, still in her nightshirt and stocking feet, was just a few quiet steps behind her.

“You must be Miss Park,” a well-dressed, generously-built older woman greeted her affably in English. She extended her hand, “Or is it Miss Grey? Amondi says one thing, Mr. Kabaka says another.”

“Yes, Park, Susan Park.” The corner of Sun’s mouth turned up slightly. For as many times as she’d said it, the words still felt strange in her mouth. In many ways, being Miss Grey was simpler. “But Amondi often calls me Miss Grey because of a joke we have. And you are?”

“Everyone here calls me Mama Akinyi. Welcome, Miss Park. How was your ride over? Were you comfortable?”

Sun found herself offering a slight bow on instinct as she shook the woman’s hand. “Yes, quite pleasant,” she responded politely. “It was a route I had never taken which had a particularly lovely view of the city.”

“Excellent, I’m glad to hear it,” she replied, her eyes addressing her directly. “Now, Mr. Kabaka wanted to be here to welcome you himself, but unfortunately, pressing business has called him away. Shall we go greet our princess? I must say, your arrival has been greatly anticipated.”

Sun looked back to see Nomi scanning the high-ceilinged room for additional cameras. She noted a single guard in view of the door dressed in a crisp white shirt. Some kind of pistol was holstered at his waist.

Before they reached the stairs, Amondi came bouncing down, already dressed in crisp white dobok, a white belt tied lopsidedly around her waist. It was a moment before Sun registered that she hadn’t mentioned anything about belts to Amondi before - that she must have done her own research on which one was appropriate for a beginner like herself. Dressed in her enthusiasm, the sight of Amondi brought a warmth and pride that Sun hadn’t anticipated and a smile, unguarded, burst from her face.

“How do I look?” Amondi asked as she reached the bottom of the stairs, twirling as if she were showing off a ball gown.

“Like a superhero,” Sun grinned. “All I brought were gym clothes and now I feel underdressed. I still need to get changed, though. Is there a place I can change?” Sun looked between Amondi and Akinyi for an answer.

“Ask her to get your phone on the wireless,” Nomi reminded her in a whisper from where she leaned against a carved wood column. Remembering no one else could hear her, she went on in a more conversational tone. “If you ask one of them to do it, it’ll seem a lot less suspicious, give us some plausible deniability.”

Sun tried not to look over at Nomi as she spoke, tried not to nod acknowledgment. Instead, she touched the hoodie pocket where her phone sat. 

“Yes, of course,” Akinyi said. “There’s a guest room upstairs you can use, second door to the left at the top of the stairs. There’s a washroom attached if you need it.”

Sun pulled out her phone and tapped the screen awake. _Wireless Networks Available_ , the lock screen declared.

“Oh, yes,” Sun said, directed more to Amondi. “Can you put my phone on the wireless here?” 

“Here, let me do it,” Amondi reached for the phone, looking briefly at Mama Akinyi as if waiting for feedback, but the older woman didn’t seem to acknowledge the question. Sun unlocked her phone and handed it to Amondi.

“Is there anything else you will need?” Akinyi asked as Amondi deftly tapped at the phone. “Amondi can show you to the exercise studio when you are ready. There are bottles of water already there.” 

“There you are,” Amondi handed the phone back.

“No, thank you. I think that will take care of everything for right now.” Sun turned to Amondi, slipping the phone back into her pocket. “I’ll just be a minute getting changed.”

Nomi caught up with Sun as she jogged up the wide, richly-colored wood of the staircase. Sun handed her the phone as she shut the door to the room that had been indicated to her. Generous windows flooded the room with light. Nomi and Sun sat down on the edge of the large bed and flicked the phone to life. 

They sat down at Nomi’s kitchen table with their mugs.

“Hmm, looks like he has a separate network set up for his business concerns. This network is mostly normal house stuff. Looks like the cameras and their central server are on that other one.” Nomi frowned at the the list of devices.

“Is that a problem?” Sun asked.

“Pff,” Nomi scoffed, intent on her task. “Just let me...yes, alright”

“What?”

“The two networks are run off the same access points on different channels. It’s like hiding your good beer in the crisper drawer instead of the rest of the fridge,” Nomi explained distractedly, without looking up.

Sun looked at her with a puzzled tilt of the head, though she could barely see her in the dim light of the kitchen. Nomi blinked her head up from the phone.

“Uh, it’s all still basically in the same place.” 

Sun nodded and sipped her tea, which had cooled significantly since she had last touched it before getting out of the car. Nomi tapped her laptop alive and brought up a terminal window.

“Here, can you read me off the IP addresses of those top couple entries?” Nomi handed the phone back to Sun as her fingers moved fluidly across the keyboard.

A few minutes later, Nomi had four small windows open showing the output of the house’s cameras. Two of them monitored the exterior of the building, one a gate in a heavily-planted area they didn’t recognize. The last surveyed the open foyer where they had been welcomed. Amondi sat on the edge of an immaculately upholstered chair, her head resting on her hands as she looked towards the stairs.

“I should get back, get started,” Sun said, setting her tea down on the table. “We talked through several plans for this. Do I need to leave the phone here at the house for you to maintain access to the cameras?”

“I think we’re fine,” said Nomi, stretching in her chair in her dim San Francisco kitchen, then on the batik-edged duvet in the brightly lit guest room in Nairobi. She flopped back on the bed.

“Oh, man, I wish I could just take a nap right here in this sunny spot.” Nomi yawned and curled on the bed as Sun changed quickly. Nomi was gone by the time she finished changing. 

As Sun started down the stairs, Amondi stood up and smiled. Sun reached out to grab the railing lightly as she stepped quietly down the stairs, continuing to look over as Amondi watched her come down. 

“How are your super powers today, Diana?” Sun asked. Amondi didn’t like discussing the treatments she was still undergoing for leukemia, so she and Capheus had adopted the language of superhero abilities to talk around it when necessary.

“Fine. At normal super strength.” Amondi shrugged, her smile broadening as she turned to Sun to reassure her of her earnestness. At this point, she was in maintenance-stage treatment, receiving low doses of chemotherapy drugs several times each week. The types of drugs and lower dosage bypassed the more striking side effects of the more intense phases of therapy. The drugs still frequently sapped her energy, though. “And yours?” She returned politely.

“Very well, thank you,” Sun replied, bowing politely. “Will you show me to your exercise studio?” 

“Yes, of course,” Amondi said in the authoritative tone she used for her character, mirroring Sun’s bow.

The exercise studio turned out to be a room about the size and shape of a garage. In fact, it looked as if it may have been a garage at some point. It lacked the expanses of glass that much of the rest of the house had. The near end of the room was a carpeted strip housing basic weightlifting equipment and a treadmill. The rest of the room was wood-floored, with a wall of mirrors running down one full wall. A ballet barre was mounted along the other. A few padded mats were folded up against the wall in the corner, near a full case of bottled water, the plastic still shrunk tightly over it.

Sun nodded to herself. The space most likely hadn’t been designed with martial arts training in mind, but it would serve nicely. She wondered if the dance studio setup had been at Amondi’s suggestion or her father’s imagination of what a girl might want, but decided not to ask.

“Let’s sit and talk a little about what the plan is overall,” Sun said, but Amondi bounced past her and starting hanging on the high barre, stretching her shoulders as she leaned down.

“I’ve been sitting all day,” Amondi said, looking over at Sun from an almost upside-down position. “Can we just get started?”

Sun stopped where she was. She wasn’t used to students talking back to her. That never would have happened in the dojangs where she had trained and taught. But she also realized that in most cases, there was a routine in place to get moving quickly. She thought back to her early impatience with anything less than sparring; the feeling of something wanting to tear its way out of her skin.

“I suppose we can get straight to our warmup, but it’s important to remember what we do here is not just about exercising the body,” she said, making silent apologies again to her early instructors. 

Amondi kept up with Sun’s barrage of calisthenics and skill-focused drills for just over an hour before she started to wilt. Amondi wasn’t about to admit it, but Sun could see the girl’s movements losing the snap of energy behind them. 

“Okay, let’s wrap up and stretch out,” Sun said, raising her arms high over her head. Amondi followed like a mirror. “So, now that you’ve had more of a real lesson, let’s talk about what the plan is here. We can talk while we stretch.”

“Do we need to stretch again?” 

“Stretching at the end of a workout is almost as important as stretching at the beginning. Your muscles will probably feel a little tight and sore tomorrow even stretching - that’s normal. Stretching helps your muscle fibers stay long and flexible, helps bring the blood to all parts of your body to help it repair. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.”

Sun sat down and started stretching out over her legs.

“How old were you when you started with all this?” Amondi asked.

“I was seven. I wanted to earlier, but my parents wanted to wait until my brother was five and old enough to start at the same time.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother. What’s your brother’s name?” Amondi asked and Sun tried not to smile. 

“His name is,” she paused for a moment trying to recall the American name they’d invented for Susan’s brother, “Charlie. Or it was. He died some years ago. I don’t talk about him much.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Amondi said, sitting up from her stretch. “How did he die?”  
“It was a car accident. He was driving drunk,” Sun said. “It was completely his own stupid fault.” There was always a tiny catharsis in telling that story as if it were true. If her brother ever drove, he would be the type to drive as if he were invincible. Or, at least with a casual disregard for the interest or safety of others. They were two sides of the same coin in his case.

“My mother died in a car accident. I was still a baby, then.” Amondi said. Sun opened her mouth to question that, but thought better of it and closed it wordlessly. She’d heard from Capheus and Shiro many of the stories about the disappearance and death of Amondi’s mother. The stories disagreed with each other in many respects, but none of them spoke of a car crash. The real story was part of why Sun was here with Amondi right now. The story she knew must be the one her father wanted her to know, and Sun figured it wasn’t her place to second guess that right now.

“You must miss her. My mother died when I was about your age, and sometimes I miss her so much it hurts,” Sun said. She switched the tucked and extended positions of her legs. Amondi watched her and followed suit.

“I guess,” Amondi began, an edge of doubt in her voice. “It’s difficult to say. It’s hard to miss someone you don’t remember knowing. I think about her a lot. There’s lots of times I want to ask her about...I don’t know, all kinds of things.” Amondi flopped down on the floor, resting her head on her hands and her elbows on the floor between her legs.

Sun nodded.

“Do you miss your brother like that, too?” Amondi asked.

“My brother and I, we never got along very well,” Sun said.

“Oh,” Amondi sighed. “That’s too bad.”

Sun shrugged noncommittally in response.

“Was your brother also a great fighter like you?”

“It never took for him the same way. He didn’t move up in rank as quickly as I did, or as quickly as the other students in his group, mostly because he didn’t pay attention well and was sloppy with technique. He never wanted to practice outside of class. So he got frustrated and begged to quit. Eventually my parents let him.”

Amondi nodded thoughtfully. 

“Not everyone can be a superhero,” she said eventually. “Not all of us are cut out for it.”

Sun smiled quietly. She sat up and took a long drink of water. 

“You’re probably right,” she agreed. “But people can surprise you sometimes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really enjoying writing this Sun/Amondi mentorship bit. I'm kind of sad that it's the kind of thing that will almost certainly never happen in show. Oh well. This is why we have fanfiction.
> 
> Also, it's been a whole two chapters since anyone's had a cup of tea, you guys. So clearly, I had to fix that (actually, it wasn't planned - the whole chat in Nomi's kitchen sort of grew out of nowhere).
> 
> Many thanks to PreRaphaelites for both her feedback through some choppy writing experiments and for sharing her martial arts knowledge.


	9. Unfamiliar Flavor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Creo que sea mejor si la familia les conozcan a ti y a Lito juntos,” Kala replied, still tasting the words she had never before spoken on her tongue like an unfamiliar flavor. Though in retrospect it shouldn’t have surprised her, she had initially been puzzled when Hernando had greeted her in a flood of Spanish and she had understood every word.

“This isn’t just a little white lie,” protested Kala from behind her cup of creamy spiced atole.

Lito pulled his feet down from the chair next to him and leaned intently over his own mug on the table, looking across at Kala with a mix of bemused confusion pulling at the corners of his eyes.

“In truth, if it were never questioned, it would be no more than that,” Kala said. “But do you know how often they come through the restaurant? How often their parents do? No, the second a single question is asked, there is no ‘girls’ week in Goa’ anymore. No.”

“So, that’s it, then,” Lito said flatly. Kala gave a frustrated sigh. She liked the idea of spending time in Goa with Lito and Hernando before Lito’s movie began filming in Mumbai, but there was no practical way to explain it to her parents.

“What am I supposed to tell them?” Kala said. “‘Baba, Mata, I’m going to the land of drugs and skimpy bikinis with these two strange, foreign men you’ve just barely met.’” 

Lito chuckled low at the thought of it, leaning back in his chair as his pale blue robe hung loosely around him. He set his cup on the table and scratched his chin.

“They don’t know yet, do they, Canelita?” He asked, more of a statement than a question, reaching for his cup and taking a rich sip.

Kala shrugged and looked over at the window, the bright morning skyline of the city. Even sharing memories and thoughts with the others, she sometimes found it difficult to communicate aspects of her relationship with her parents that had always felt natural to her. With the exception of Capheus, none of them had lived with their parents as adults. Even in his case, the way his mother relied on him shifted the dynamic of the way they lived together. 

“You know, I think it would almost be easier to tell them about that,” she laughed, shaking her head. Lito sat up straight, looking at her intently until his eyes caught hers. He raised an eyebrow, saying nothing. Kala’s eyebrows dipped in confusion, though she caught his implication. Lito shrugged, a pleased smirk on his face as he finally released his gaze and sat back in the chair again.

“So instead of telling a silly lie, you are suggesting I should tell a ridiculous truth?” Kala asked. Lito took another sip, shrugging again.

“I have already seen your family’s faith in each other support it through several critical moments that required patience with forces beyond what the eyes can see,” Lito said. “Besides, they were ready to let their family get a little bigger not so long ago. This is just a slightly different way of doing the same thing.”

Kala took another sip and rolled the thick, grainy sweetness around her tongue as she searched for a response. Lito wasn’t wrong, not entirely. She didn’t doubt her parents’ approval or trust in her, whether or not they fully understood or believed her. They would be keen to see the dangers in the situation, too, and to seek ways to protect her from those. 

“Assuming they did know, what would I tell them, then? About you? Do I tell the truth about that, too?” She spun back. Lito smirked impishly from behind his mug and Kala almost regretted the challenge she had laid in front of him as she felt her cheeks grow warm. She crossed her ankles and shifted in her seat as she tucked them under her chair, her eyes cast down into her cup.

“You tell them whatever version of the truth makes them feel comfortable enough to let you go,” Lito shrugged. “Even if it’s a made up one.”

\----------

A breeze ruffled through Kala’s hair as she and Hernando stepped out of the airport terminal into the concrete echo of the road. Bathed in the cool orange of fluorescent light, taxis bumped across the pavement, doors slammed, drivers yelled to each other over the top of all the rest.

“¿Pues, a dónde vamos ahora?” Hernando asked. 

“Creo que sea mejor si la familia les conozcan a ti y a Lito juntos,” Kala replied, still tasting the words she had never before spoken on her tongue like an unfamiliar flavor. Though in retrospect it shouldn’t have surprised her, she had initially been puzzled when Hernando had greeted her in a flood of Spanish and she had understood every word. The only other person she could have used the language with was Lito and she was rarely clear which language she was speaking with the others in her cluster without anyone else there.

“That’s perfectly fine by me,” Hernando yawned. “I’m too tired and hungry to meet people I’m supposed to impress right now. Air travel like that always makes me question my sense of time, self, reality in general. You could tell me I had been in suspended animation while twenty years passed everywhere else and I think I might believe you right now.”

Kala laughed. “Well, actually…”

“Oh, no, don’t you even,” he held up a hand, turning away, but breaking into a warm smile and laughing with her almost immediately. Kala smiled. She’d only met Hernando briefly in her own experience before this, over Skype. Most of her knowledge of him was framed through Lito’s heart-shaped lens, but even in the five minutes she’d spent with him she felt like she could corroborate Lito’s research on the subject; she found herself more charmed by him than she had expected.

Kala negotiated briefly with the taxi driver over the top of the black and yellow hatchback. He loaded the two suitcases into the boot as she and Hernando slipped into the back seat.

“Hungry?” She asked.

“You would be, too, if you hadn’t eaten in twenty years, suspended animation or no,” Hernando smirked with a shrug.

“There’s plenty around. We’ll grab something near your hotel and carry in,” she said, feeling a pinch of disappointment. She’d had an image in her head of welcoming the both of them by sweeping them off to her family’s restaurant right from the airport and stuffing them full of her father’s cooking. The producer of Lito’s movie had had other plans, though, and insisted on an giving Lito an official welcome with an entourage of studio types. Hernando, not officially traveling with him, was left in an awkward niche between the two ends of Lito’s visit. “I suppose you could order room service at the-”

“I’m tired, not dead!” Hernando interrupted, adjusting his glasses. “I follow a very strict diet - no boring food. How do I come to India and eat my first meal room service in a hotel run by white people?”

“I suppose I can’t argue with that,” Kala smiled broadly. “Though it’s worth remembering who’s actually working in that kitchen.”

“All the more tragic,” he said with shake of his head and a smirk.

“There’s whole cluster of food stalls near where your hotel is that I’m pretty sure are open late.”

“Now you’re speaking my language,” Hernando grinned and then looked into his lap, puzzled, and laughed softly at himself. “I just thought about that. You didn’t speak Spanish before…” Kala shook her head. “I’m still not fully accustomed to all this. You know that until recently, I spoke better English than Lito?”

“Is that so?” Kala asked and Hernando sighed with a wry contentment scrawled across his face. 

The driver got back in and made small talk with the both them in English as he swerved and honked through several lanes of traffic leading towards the city. Hernando asked the driver what he thought about the regulation changes that were phasing out the old Fiat cabs that had dominated in Mumbai for so long. Kala sat back to listen as the conversation turned to the vintage taxis of Cuba. True to his word, Hernando seemed to be totally comfortable holding his own conversing with the cab driver in English.

The last embers of daylight glowed warm on the sliver of horizon visible through the high-rise buildings lining both sides of the street. It reflected off of the mirrored glass of the hotel as the driver pulled around to the front door.

“Do you want to check in and take your bags up to the room or go get food first?” Kala asked after paying the driver.

“I don’t want to keep dragging this bag around, but if I go upstairs and sit down I don’t think I’ll ever get up again.”

“I can get food and bring it up,” Kala suggested, her own empty stomach starting to protest quietly. Hernando scrunched his face in response like he was in pain.

“Are you alright?” Kala said. Hernando sighed.

“Ugh, I'm torn! I want to go see the food with you - this is high on my list of things to do while I’m here, but I also don’t want to move.” 

“It’s only a few hundred meters down that road,” Kala smiled kindly and pointed. “It won’t be too difficult to get there later.”

Hernando sighed again, looking down the road. He rolled his head back and took a deep breath.

“No, let’s go. I can do this,” his head snapped back forward and he inhaled sharply through his nose, like a boxer gearing for the last round. He slung a small bag across his body. Kala’s laugh rang as she grabbed one of the sleek, black suitcases and extended the handle towards her. The degree of thought and energy he was putting into this amused her, but it also seemed important for him to find his own goals in the trip, rather than just waiting around for Lito.

“¿Éstas cosas se te ocurren con frecuencia?” She asked, switching back to Spanish as they began to walk down the street, each dragging a suitcase.

“Crawling like a zombie towards food?” He asked wryly. “Oh, yes.” Kala wondered if the tone of his response was earnest or if he had understood what she meant and was trying to avoid it. She smiled and walked on quietly next to him.

“It’s simply a part of the fairytale,” he smiled a little sadly a few moments later. “I knew that going in, that there would always be places I would be invisible, even in plain sight. To some degree or another, it’s part of life for most gay men in Mexico. But, you know something about being invisible in plain sight, don’t you?”

Kala tilted her head in confusion as she looked at him, unsure of exactly to what he referred.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, shaking his head gently. “Tell me about what kind of food we’re going to get here.” 

Hernando buzzed from stall to stall with a newfound burst of energy, asking a barrage of questions about the different dishes and their ingredients with scientific intensity. 

“I don’t know, I want to eat all of it. Are you getting anything?” He asked after his studious rounds.

“I haven’t eaten yet, so, yes.” 

“Would you mind sharing so I can get a taste of more things?” He asked with a hopeful grin, his eyebrows high.

“Not at all. That’s often how my sister and I order when we eat together somewhere like this.” 

Hernando picked crispy bits off the edge of the dosa to crunch on as they carried the food to the tent, wreathed in garlands of tiny lights. He sighed relief as he sat down in the plastic chair and leaned back for a minute.

Kala picked up a section of the dosa, stuffed with heavily-spiced veggies and took a bite.

Hernando sat up in his chair again and picked up a piece for himself. He hummed with such delight as he chewed his first bite that it almost made Kala blush.

“So, is Lito getting a taste of this, too?” Hernando asked, leaning across the table.

Kala closed her eyes tried to focus on Lito. Trying to reach a cluster mate was, even now after a few months of experience, something of an imprecise science, especially if there weren’t a specific trigger for a memory. She tried to remember some of the faces she had seen in the distance greeting Lito at the airport, but she had been focused on Hernando and the faces had mostly melted into a cluster of sunglasses. Except for one woman wearing a brightly-patterned dress. Kala focused on her and saw a flash of her, sitting across a long table. The table was laden with flowers, carafes of water, fruit juice and champagne. As she tried to focus more on the surroundings, she started to feel herself grow a little tipsy and giggled.

“Is that a response?” Hernando asked.

“I think he’s a little bit drunk right now.” Kala giggled again. “The more I try to focus on him, the more I feel it.”

Hernando’s eyes rolled and fluttered and he shook his head, laughing himself. 

“Are they drinking champagne?” He demanded playfully. Kala nodded. He rolled his eyes.

“Oh, he is going to be so cuddly when he gets in later. Champagne always makes him that way. Enough champagne and he’ll start trying to seduce a lamp.”

“And how does the lamp respond?”

“Let’s just say I’ve woken up with a lampshade in the bed before.” Hernando smirked, one eyebrow cocked suggestively until Kala broke down in laughter and he followed suit. 

“Aren’t you ever worried that he’ll seduce something more than, well, someone more than a lamp?” She asked as she reeled in her laughter and shook off some of the lightheaded giddiness that had bled into her finding Lito. 

Hernando gave a soberly tight-lipped smile, and then took the last bite of the piece of dosa he was holding, licking his fingers and wiping his mouth before responding.

“He always comes home,” he said finally, catching her eyes with his as he said it. His voice was soft, but confident and loving. Kala looked away, feeling an odd twist in her gut that she couldn’t place.

“So, he…” Kala trailed off nervously, not wanting to speak of infidelity aloud.

“If anything happens he tells me about it," he said frankly. Kala bit her lip trying to understand. 

“And that’s okay with you?” She asked. Faithfulness had always been a part of how that kind of partnership had been defined for her, though she had realized recently that as long as she was connected to the cluster, it would be a complex situation for her.

“Like I said, he always comes home. I don’t have to know where he is to know that I have his heart. Besides, how much can it amount to? There’s a handful of girls he’s kissed after too much champagne but he says it always feels weird pretty fast.”

“And men?” She asked quietly, feeling a little uncomfortable bringing it up publicly but slightly insulated by the language.

Hernando smiled impishly, biting his lip and shrugging without a word.

Kala looked at him quizzically, not immediately clear what he was trying to imply. And then Lito’s memory surfaced, a sweaty tangle of skin and limbs in the dark that Kala could almost taste on her tongue. Her eyes grew to saucers and she took another large, sloppy bite of dosa to try to reassert her own sense of taste in it. She could feel the memory like a warmth in her core, and she crossed her legs. 

LIto reached out and grabbed a section of dosa from the plate from beside her.

“Hola, mi amor,” he said across the table to Hernando with as soft a smile as Kala thought she’d ever seen on him, even though Hernando couldn’t hear him. He reached across the table to touch Hernando’s hand and Kala reached, too.

“He’s here with us,” she said with her own soft smile as her hand touched his. 

“Is he still at the party?” Hernando asked Kala.

“You can talk to him. He’s sitting right next to me. You can’t hear him but he can hear you.” She said. Hernando trained his eyes to the right of her and looked intently for a moment before bowing his head laughing.

“How strange is this!” He said, addressing the other side of the table generally. 

“Yes, I’m still at the party. I just took a quick break in the bathroom, hoping I could connect with you both,” Lito said and Kala repeated it for Hernando.

“Kala says they’re giving you champagne. I warned her what happens when you load up on bubbles,” he said, addressing the empty chair he saw next to Kala.

Lito just giggled in response and reached to touch Hernando’s face. Kala’s hand followed his movement, stroking the soft grain of his beard. It was different, softer somehow than the short stubble Wolfgang often wore.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” Hernando asked Kala. She nodded and he closed his eyes and leaned against her hand. He laughed as he opened his eyes a moment later just in time to see a beet-stained glob of veggies plop onto the plate in front of Kala from where she still held a piece of dosa with her other hand. 

“This is so strange,” he laughed warmly to her as he reached up and gently lifted her hand from his face, returning it to the table with a gentle squeeze. Lito giggled and took another bite.

“We need more of this,” he said, taking a hungry bite. “We’ve barely gotten appetizers to go with our drinks here.”

“Any idea when you’ll be back?” Hernando asked Kala and Lito together. Lito sighed.

“Probably not soon enough. We haven’t gotten our main course yet and they’re talking about going out dancing later? I don’t know. I don’t think I can beg out on travel exhaustion until at least after dinner. But who knows how long that will take?” 

“Lástima,” Hernando said as Kala repeated Lito’s words.

“You have such pretty eyes,” Lito giggled, and reached over to push Hernando’s glasses up on his face.

“You have had champagne, haven’t you?” Hernando smiled slyly. 

Kala felt her phone buzz in her bag, and slid it out quietly.

“Are you coming?” The text from her friend Ananda read. “The movie’s going to start soon.”

She had almost forgotten that she was supposed to meet up with friends at the movies - that was the story she had fed her parents about her whereabouts this evening. There was no way she could make it to the Aurora by eight at this point. It wasn't just to be a story originally. She had made plans to meet up with Ananda and a few other women from work after getting Hernando settled. 

“Not feeling well - staying in tonight. Sorry,” she responded and immediately felt strange about it. She might have to redirect questions about it later, but that was the kind of little white lie she could manage. 

Lito looked down at her phone and smiled as he caught her eyes looking up from it. He said nothing though. His attention was pulled back across the table, towards Hernando.

“I suppose there is only so much time I can spend in the bathroom,” he sighed heavily. “I should get back to the table.”

As soon as Kala repeated his words he was gone.

“How often does that happen?” Hernando asked.

“The visits? I don’t really even know anymore.”

“Can you make it happen or predict when it’s going to happen?”

“There’s a number of factors. I guess the closest way that I can describe it is that it happens when you are both tuned to the same channel, but you don’t always know what channel you are on and many times you are on more than one at once. But it can also depend on time of day, mental state.” 

Hernando grunted thoughtfully as he chewed. 

“So it’s not like making a phone call? You can’t just directly connect with one of the others?”

“No, not really. I mean, you have different degrees of closeness with different people, more in common or not that means you are more likely to connect, but a certain amount of it is - I don’t want to say it’s random, because I don’t believe it is, but the logic behind it is not always immediately obvious.”

“You are such a scientist.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You just are. I work in a library at a university. I know your kind.”

“I didn’t realize that we were so easy to spot. Also, I don’t remember the last time that I went to a library to look up an article. Virtually all of the research I need is online.”

“I’ll admit, I wouldn’t have spotted you as a scientist from a distance. Maybe that’s some kind of a bias I need to work on. Because you are a textbook scientist.”

Kala laughed, scraping up the last of the dosa filling from the plate with her fingers.

“Should we get you checked in?” She asked.

“I suppose,” he sighed. “I’m feeling less dead now. That was precisely what I had hoped to get out of dinner here, more if I include your excellent company. So, thank you.”

They cleared up the space and hefted up the suitcases again. The sun was totally gone from the sky, but the city around them still sparkled crystalline with lights as they walked the short distance back to the hotel. 

As they walked, Kala noticed Wolfgang walking in step on the other side of her. Normally she would put in her bluetooth earpiece before speaking to him, but she felt a little bolder with Hernando walking beside her.

“Are you on the bus back from work?” She asked, already knowing the answer based on the time and the scent he carried with him from the fish plant.

“Pardon?” Hernando asked.

“There’s another one here,” she said to Hernando casually.

“Ah,” he said as he kept walking.

“Yeah, the bus is almost empty tonight,” Wolfgang answered and Kala had a brief flash of the bus interior. It was bright out - the sun wouldn’t set for a while yet in St. Petersburg. An old woman sat at the other corner of the bus but aside from that it was empty. Wolfgang had his arms stretched across several of the empty seats on either side of him, his legs stretched out in front of him and his head leaning against the window. 

“Is everything alright?” Hernando asked as she snapped back to Mumbai, where she had stopped walking on the sidewalk.

“Yes, fine,” she said, looking back and forth between the two men.

Wolfgang had disappeared again to get off the bus by the time they had reached the hotel.

“Can you manage getting the baggage up from here?” Kala asked as they reached the door.

“Could you help me bring it up?” Hernando asked and Kala was a little surprised.

“Sure, I guess,” she said, standing by him as he checked in, surprised to hear about the room reservation for a Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez. Kala felt a little awkward with the implication there, but tried to act naturally until they had left the desk.

“Am I just coming up to make your story better?” She asked, a little incensed.

“Not really, but that was just an added benefit,” he said with a smile. “It raises fewer eyebrows reserving it that way. Especially since Lito is officially staying at that other fancy hotel, it’s fairly easy to create the illusion of separateness.”

Kala nodded.


	10. They

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lito disappeared from view on the other side of the bed, but Kala felt him in her mind, his buzz much heavier than hers, felt his desire reaching across the bed. She wasn’t sure if it was her hand or his that lifted the strawberry from the plate and brought it to her mouth, her tongue swirling around the tip of it before drawing it into her mouth slowly and biting it off of its stem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo! Two chapters today. I wrote this and the last as one long chapter together, but for length and, uh, thematic reasons it made sense to break them up. 
> 
> If you don't feel like reading the smutty bits, you might want to take off after the strawberries show up. If you do, well, enjoy.

“So who was it you were talking to earlier when you stopped on the street?” Hernando asked.

“Oh, that was Wolfgang,” she tried to say as nonchalantly as possible.

“He’s the hot German, no?” Hernando asked and Kala smirked and blushed.

“Ah, I guess you could describe him that way,” she said, looking down at the tight pattern of the carpet in the elevator, as some deep part of her agreed.

“You and he,” Hernando began, leaving a pause long enough to make Kala nervous and double check that they were alone in the elevator. “You’re something of an item, aren’t you?”

“I guess you could say that,” Kala said noncommittally, examining the buttons in the elevator. “I’m still not really sure what to call it.” She still wasn’t sure how to talk about Wolfgang to people outside the cluster, to whom she didn’t really need to explain the facts of what was happening, just how she felt about it. She wasn’t sure adequate language existed to describe all of it without the connection to qualify it.

“But you are sleeping with him, yes?” He asked bluntly.

“Can we not talk about that right now?” Kala breathed, feeling exposed and flustered. Hernando shrugged. They rode the rest of the way in an awkward silence. She hadn’t realized how plainly people could speak about sex until meeting the cluster. She had friends fond of speaking in dirty jokes and salacious implications, but the acts themselves, if they occurred, were not spoken. She was almost envious of the comfort some of her cohort had in talking about it. 

As they set down the luggage in the room, Kala walked to the window and pulled aside the heavy paisley damask of the drapes. It was rare she saw the city at night from so high up, and the view, like an armada of tiny lights floating on the water, didn’t disappoint.

“So, tell me what we see here,” Hernando asked as he stepped up beside her to the window. “Do you recognize anything specific?”

“That’s the airport,” she pointed out, “It’s kind of hard to miss.”

“And where do you live?” He asked.

“Well, the airport is about directly north of here and directly north of my house, so, that way about an equal distance,” she pointed back towards the door.

“And the ocean?”

“West.”

“Do you think I’ll be able to see it from here?”

“Hard to say. The bay is a bit farther than the airport. But there is rather a lot of it,” she smiled.

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable in the elevator,” he said. 

“No, it’s alright,” she said, mostly meaning it. “It’s just, I’ve never had to say it aloud. I haven’t talked about it with anyone outside the cluster. And with them, they already know, I don’t need to say it.”

“So you had never slept with anyone before,” Hernando began and interrupted himself again. “I’m sorry, I’m doing it again.”

“No, we’re actually in private now, I think it’s okay,” she said, only half believing herself. “It had never come up before. It’s not an expected part of dating here, and even then I didn’t date much up until my fiance. And he was such a traditionalist about it that he never offered to more than kiss me. Truthfully, I didn’t know I could feel that way about someone before I met Wolfgang.” 

“Fiance?” Hernando asked, raising his eyebrow.

“Fiance,” Kala repeated with a sigh. “I met the cluster only days before I was to be married. I was most of the way through the ceremony when Wolfgang arrived and I fainted.”

“Oh, wait I have heard this story! He appeared completely naked, right?” Hernando giggled.

Kala blushed and nodded. 

“Ah, I love it,” Hernando redoubled his laughter. Lito sauntered out of the bathroom, sliding up between Kala and Hernando by the window and sliding an arm around each of their waists. 

“What a view!” He said, distracted by the lights below.

“How is the party going, Lito?” Kala asked and Hernando looked around.

“Oh, it’s just fine, just great,” he said, sitting on the edge of the large bed and flopping backwards.

“Have you gotten food yet or just more champagne?” Kala asked, pointing to where Lito was sprawled on the bed and Hernando giggled.

“No, we got some soup,” he said. “It was so delicious. The champagne was also delicious. I think there’s more food coming soon.”

Kala repeated Lito’s words for Hernando. 

“Kala was just telling me about Wolfgang crashing her wedding,” Hernando said to the bed.

“That man,” Lito said, propping himself up on his elbows as he began to speak, “has a truly magnificent penis!”

Kala felt herself blush all the way from her ears to her fingertips.

“Aren’t you going to tell him what I said?” Lito asked her.

She tried to stifle a laugh without much success, but said nothing.

“Come on, you agree with me, right?”

“What are you talking about? What’s he saying?” Hernando asked.

Kala continued laughing, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head.

“Go on, tell him,” Lito urged with a lazy wave of his hand.

Kala shook her head again.

“Is he trying to get you to say lewd things to me?” Hernando asked.

By this point, Kala was overcome with giggles at the proposition.

“You know it’s true,” Lito shrugged. “You should tell everyone about it. I would.”

“Definitely more champagne,” Kala giggled to Hernando.

“So that’s a yes on the lewd remarks?” Hernando asked.

“You, know, you should have champagne, too,” Lito said and pulled out his phone. “What room is this?”

“2408,” Kala recited before thinking, though she realized she probably couldn’t keep that number from him. Lito disappeared again and she turned to Hernando with a look of bemusement.

“Is he still there?” Hernando asked.

“I think he’s gone to order us champagne.”

“One could never argue compellingly that he’s a mean drunk,” Hernando said.

“So, anyway, your wedding. Was his nakedness that compelling to change your mind so drastically?”

“I don’t know how much that really was what changed my mind,” she said. “I don’t know if changing my mind was really what was at issue.” Kala sat down on the bed, slipping off her flats and crossing her legs under her on the bed.

“What do you mean?” Hernando asked, sitting down next to her, one leg folded under him as he turned towards her.

“I guess, I’d just never really considered feeling that way about someone. I thought that was just fairytales. Rajan, he, well, he was a good match. Very pragmatic, very sweet. I thought I was being realistic. But...”

“But he didn’t make you feel any kind of fire like your German does,” Hernando finished.

“I just didn’t even know that kind of desire was possible,” she said, revisiting the delicious sickness she felt the first time she saw Wolfgang.

“That’s exactly it!” Hernando punctuated emphatically with his hands in front of him. “I completely understand. I was engaged once, too. To a woman.”

“But I thought you weren’t attracted to women,” Kala said. Hernando took his glasses off briefly, cleaning them with his shirt.

“I had a lot of affection for her,” he said with a shrug as he put his glasses back on. “Elena and I, we were close friends for years before we were anything more. It can be easy to mistake one kind of intimacy for another, especially when it feels like it fits the mold of what’s expected. Just like you described, I didn’t know that it was possible to find the kind of consuming desire in real life that you hear about in stories. I loved Elena. I really did. I still do, in a way. If we had gotten married, I think we would have been mostly content in our lives, if only for not knowing what was missing.”

“So what happened?” Kala asked, shifting herself so she was facing him.

“Nothing so dramatic as an exquisitely nude man showing up in the middle of the ceremony,” Hernando smirked. “It never made it that far. I went to UNC - a university in the US - for my master’s degree, and I met Levi.”

“And you fell in love with him?” Kala asked.

“Love would be a dangerous word for Levi. I’d rather just say that he fucked my brains out.”

“That seems rather crude.”

“Well, so was he. He was- he occupied the other extreme of mistaking one kind of intimacy for another.” 

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know that he had a real interest in hearing about the rest of my life, you know? What I was working on, how it was living in a different country, what I was thinking if it wasn’t about his ass.”

“Was he also a student?”

“He was working on an engineering degree, so there wasn’t a lot of overlap between our work, but Elena’s a geologist and we’ve always had great conversations about our work.”

“Do you still keep in touch with Elena?”

“As much as I can. She travels a lot for her work. Sometimes she stays with us when she’s in DF for a conference or some other business.”

“What was it like to break the engagement with her? Did she take it well?”

“I think it was almost a relief for her. The deeper she’d gotten into her work, the more she realized that it was the most important thing for her, and that she wasn’t really invested in having a romantic relationship with anyone.”

There was a knock at the door. Kala stood up into her shoes and took a large step away from the bed as an alarm in her hindbrain triggered, as if the person at the door was there to catch her at not being where she said she’d be. Hernando flopped back laughing and Kala remembered Lito’s remarks about getting them champagne.

Hernando stood up and opened the door to a young man in a crisp purple suit pushing a cart with a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice and a plate of fruit.

“Open it now?” He asked. Hernando looked back at Kala. Kala looked at the clock. Nearly 8:30. The movie wouldn’t get out until almost 11:00, so no one would miss her at home until about 11:30. She didn’t want to risk walking in drunk, but she’d enjoyed borrowing Lito’s giddiness enough to want some of her own. She nodded to Hernando, who turned to the waiter and nodded. He deftly popped the bottle into a napkin and filled the two flutes.

“Do you have cash for a tip?” Hernando whispered loudly across the room. “All I have is pesos.”

Kala pulled her wallet out of her purse as she stepped over, wondering what was appropriate in somewhere fancy like this, finally handing the waiter two 100-rupee notes. He gave a small, satisfied bow and departed, closing the door quietly behind him. Hernando popped a piece of mango in his mouth as she put her wallet away and groaned almost indecently as he chewed it.

“I beg your pardon?” She said as she looked over at him.

“You need to have a piece of this mango,” he said, picking up another morsel and bringing it to her lips. A little surprised at his closeness, she ate the piece of mango from his fingertips. It did seem to be at peak ripeness, melting to sweet juice in her mouth. Hernando offered her one of the champagne flutes.

“What are we drinking to?” He asked. Kala laughed, unsure of what an appropriate response would be there.

“To mango?” She said uncertainly.

“To mango!” He whooped and tilted his glass towards her. She clinked her glass against his.

“No, no,” he said, “you need to make eye contact when you toast like this. Otherwise, you risk cursing yourself with seven years’ bad sex.”

Kala laughed as he pulled his glasses down his nose and widened his eyes intently at her. She looked back at him with a similarly ridiculous glare and he clinked his glass to hers, then broke his eyes away and pushed his glasses back up his nose to drink.

The effervescent tartness of the wine played with the lingering sweetness of the fruit in her mouth as she took a long sip. She grabbed another piece of mango for herself. 

“Why don’t you bring the fruit,” Hernando said as he grabbed the ice bucket with the bottle to his hip and headed back for the bed.

Kala brought the fruit over to the lavishly cushioned bed, setting the plate in the middle and perching on the far corner of the bed as Hernando stretched his legs down the other side.

“So how did your fiance take his letdown?” Hernando asked.

“I can’t say it was as simple as it sounds like it was for you with your Elena. I think I broke his dream. But, he was nothing if not a proper gentleman about it,” Kala said, still picturing the sour smile with which he had managed to costume himself as she sipped her wine.

“So what did you tell him? Did you tell him that there was someone else?” He asked.

“I told him I wasn’t ready to make a commitment like that, which is at least a part of the truth,” Kala said. 

“You know that’s going to mean he still thinks he has a chance someday, right?” Hernando said and Kala sank a little in agreement. He had said that he would be there when she decided she was ready. Of course he had. It supported the image he had of himself. She didn’t doubt his feelings for her, but felt sometimes like there was a part of it that was trying to prove something to someone or something else. “I mean, that’s totally his problem. I don’t want to imply that you chose the wrong words there. All you owed him was a clear ‘no’”

Lito bounced in again before Kala could respond, sprawling across the head of the bed towards Hernando. 

“He always gets a little red in the cheeks like this when he drinks,” Lito whispered unnecessarily to Kala. “It’s so cute I just want to eat him like one of these little strawberries.”

It was then that it happened. Lito disappeared from view on the other side of the bed, but Kala felt him in her mind, his buzz much heavier than hers, felt his desire reaching across the bed. She wasn’t sure if it was her hand or his that lifted the strawberry from the plate and brought it to her mouth, her tongue swirling around the tip of it before drawing it into her mouth slowly and biting it off of its stem. She tasted another sip from her glass and then saw it set gently on the floor. Pushed by Lito’s hunger, she was crawling across the bed, hovering a hair’s breadth from Hernando’s face. As she scraped his earlobe gently with her teeth, drawing it delicately into her mouth with a twist of her tongue, she was beginning to have difficulty disentangling Lito’s want from her own.

Hernando scrambled to sit up straight away from her.

“Hola, mi amor,” Lito purred in as low a whisper as Kala’s voice could manage. Hernando squinted down at her in surprise.

“Lito?” He asked, trying to wrap his mind around the words, the moves that could only be Lito but had just worn Kala’s face.

“I’m tired of this party and I miss you,” he breathed, reaching up to stroke Hernando’s face with Kala’s soft hand, trying to draw it in gently towards her face.

“Is Kala still there?” Hernando asked and Lito stepped up and away from the bed. Kala pulled her hand back in surprise, flopping to a sitting position on the other side of the bed, examining her hands front and back to make sure they were really hers. Her breath caught slightly ragged in her throat.

“I’m so sorry, Canelita,” Lito said to her. “I don’t know how that happened. I just wanted to kiss him and suddenly, it seemed like I could.”

“What’s happening?” Asked Hernando, looking pinker than he had a moment ago and showing a certain amount of arousal. Kala looked between the two of them.

“Lito misses you,” Kala said.

“That was him who did...that... just now, yes?” He searched her face for clarification.

Kala nodded. Lito wasn’t so concretely in her head anymore, but something of his desire had lingered in her body. Suddenly she felt strong hands massaging her shoulders behind her and twisted her head to see Wolfgang behind her. His hair was wet and he didn’t seem to be wearing clothes. She sensed that he was in the shower back in Russia. 

“You weren’t planning on getting up to anything without me, were you?” He asked with the seductive smile she’d come to love and hate at the same time.

Lito giggled at the sight.

“So you’re...okay with this?” She asked, still trying to sort out what was in front of her.

“I would be a hypocrite not to be if you are. But if you want to leave, I’ll walk out with you,” he said.

Kala giggled at the mental image of walking out of the hotel with a wet, naked man.

“I, well,” she began, starting to look longingly at the lavishly decorated bed, thinking of all the times she’d muffled her excitement in her pillow at home for fear of tipping anyone off to what was happening in her bed. She grabbed another piece of mango off of the plate and chewed it slowly. She could feel her own desire rising as it flowed between the three of them, building and tightening gently with each feedback cycle.

“I’m not the only person who needs to be alright with this,” she said as she swallowed the fruit, trying to remain impartial as she looked over at a confused Hernando, who had been trying to follow the triangular conversation with only one out of its three sides. Kala picked up her glass from the floor and drained the last of it, offering the empty glass to Hernando to fill.

“So what is happening? Who’s here?” He said as he refilled her glass. Kala settled back against the pillow on the opposite side of the bed, a wide berth between them, and took a large gulp of champagne.

“Lito is right over there,” she pointed just to the side of the bed. “Wolfgang is there,” she pointed to the end of the bed.

“I see,” said Hernando, pensively confused. “Wait, what am I talking about? Of course I don’t see. But I believe you.”

Kala tried to search for the words to explain what it was she, or he or they wanted but found herself coming up short and looked over at Lito.

“I don’t know what to say, you ask him,” she said. Lito shrugged and then she could feel him in her mind again.

“Mi amor, I can’t wait until I get back to have you. Could you want me even when I look like this?” He breathed. 

“Will this be okay for her?” Hernando whispered back nervously, almost as if Kala couldn’t hear him. Lito reached forward and plucked Hernando’s glasses from his face, setting them gently on the bedside table.

“She’s already agreed. And Wolfgang is here. If I know him, he will take immaculately good care of making sure that her needs are completely satisfied,” Lito murmured and just the way he spoke of it made Kala tremble with excitement. Wolfgang’s hand rested on her leg, stroking the tender patch just above the back of her knee through the red linen fabric of her loose trousers.

Hernando looked down the bed and then back at Kala’s face, seeing the two personalities like flecks of color in her eyes. His hand tentatively brushed the skin of her cheek and she, Lito, they leaned into his touch. He bit his lip as his eyes darted around her face, his hand sliding gently to the back of her neck as he drew her face in closer. His lips parted gently and he kissed her, drawing the kiss in deeply as he inhaled. Tongues danced against each other as they kissed with doubled urgency. As their heads drew apart, Lito bit Hernando’s lip gently.

“Well, I suppose this is something we haven’t tried before,” Hernando laughed softly as they hung near each other. He reached down and moved the plate of fruit from the middle of the bed, first trying to place it on the bedside table and almost dropping it as it tried to settle on his glasses. They giggled as he caught it before it slid to the floor, setting the whole plate on the floor beside the bed. He came back up with a piece of mango, bringing it right to her lips. Lito snaked her tongue around his fingers as he pulled them into her mouth along with the fruit, pursing her lips gently around his two fingers.

Wolfgang’s hand slid up along the side of her and slipped under her blouse as he nestled himself along the other side of her. As Hernando’s fingers slipped from her mouth, Kala and Lito shifted her body towards the center of the large bed, looking up at the two others hungrily, their desire for their beloveds combining geometrically as their legs tangled. Wolfgang leaned in to kiss her lips, tasting like the weak tea his aunt favored as their mouths devoured each other. His hand slipped between her breasts and unsnapped the bra that was clasped there, letting it fall open under her blouse. She felt Hernando’s beard brushing softly along her neck, and his mouth connected with the skin of her collarbone, nipping gently along the length of it towards the hollow of her throat as his fingers began to trace light circles around her navel, exposed as her shirt had been pushed up. 

Kala surfaced from Wolfgang’s kiss and sat up long enough to tug the embroidered white blouse she was wearing over her head, tossing it carelessly aside as she shrugged her arms out of her bra. Almost before she could lean back against the cushioned headboard, she had Wolfgang’s mouth teasing one of her nipples with gentle teeth and Hernando kissing along the exposed curve of her hipbone. She and Lito let out some kind of tangled groan as each of the two men offered up attentions he knew would please his partner. Her eyes slid shut as she savored the diverse attentions being paid to her body. 

Her eyes jerked open at the feel of another weight on the bed, another pair of hands unbuttoning her trousers. She looked up, shocked to see Lito smirking back at her satisfiedly from above. He raised a finger to his lips as if to assert that this was their secret. He leaned down, kissing Hernando’s temple and then tracing just under the top edge of her striped panties with the very tip of his tongue. Hernando paused and looked up for a moment, as if he had felt and echo of Lito’s kiss against his head. 

Just like that, Lito was sharing her head again. They curled down to where Hernando was, lifting his head and looking him in the eye with a mischievous grin. His lips were gorgeously red and swollen. They pressed his shoulders back gently, but firmly onto the bed. Kala’s leg swung over as they climbed on top of him, pressing their mouths together with a renewed hunger. They reached in to undo the small dark buttons trailing down the front of his blue linen shirt.

“Do you remember that time you brought that pretty Argentine boy home and we took turns blindfolding each other?” Hernando asked Lito. Kala watched with slight embarrassment as his memory flipped through a number of similar scenes, eventually setting on the right one.

“I think so,” Lito said, “but it couldn’t hurt to refresh my memory.”

“You were both doing all kinds of different things to me while I was blindfolded and then making me guess who was doing it,” Hernando said. 

“Ah, yes, of course. And if you guessed wrong, then- Yes, that was a particularly good one. We should remember that one for another time.” Kala found it odd to hear those words in her own voice, though she could hear it in Lito’s in parallel in her own mind, her hand stroking Hernando’s chest, flicking at his nipple just so.

“That may have been one of my favorite guests,” Hernando said, twitching as his nipple was pinched. “This reminds me of that, but without the blindfold. I think I can tell when it’s you, but the guessing makes it more fun.”

Wolfgang reached around to Kala’s bare stomach, sliding his hand down to trace with his fingers the same line Lito had defined with his tongue. Kala shuddered and gasped and felt it echo back to her across the connection.

“What was that?” Hernando asked.

“I told you Wolfgang would take good care of her,” Lito said. He leaned in close to Hernando’s ear, whispering, “I know you can’t see what he’s doing, so do you want me to tell you?”

“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” Wolfgang said, but with a shit-faced grin stretching as far as it could across his face. Kala and Lito both knew that he took a very specific pride in bringing her the pleasure that he did. 

“What’s wrong with being a little ridiculous, now and then?” Lito laughed and leaned over to kiss Wolfgang deeply, then turned back to to kiss Hernando.

“I suppose that’s a tough argument to counter under the circumstances,” Wolfgang laughed as he watched Kala’s hands start to undo Hernando’s khakis and he reached to slide his hands into hers. They fumbled as all the trousers tried to come off as once. They finally gave up on trying to disrobe each other, breaking contact just long enough for each of them shed the remaining clothing from their skin.

As she settled back onto the bed, naked, Kala took a step back in her thinking and found it surprising how comfortable, even natural it felt here nestled between the two men. Each of them looked at her with their own wide-eyed loving gaze, even though they were looking for different things as they did. For a moment, they just lay there and breathed, not moving, not speaking. She felt their breath fall into sync and felt the throbbing heat between her legs begin to ache a little more deliciously with each breath they took.

Lito took control again, reaching out to delicately stroke the cocks on either side of them, tracing her thumbs up along the veins in parallel, both men breathing heavily, Wolfgang into her breasts, Hernando into her neck, as they nuzzled gently against her body.

Turning towards Hernando, Lito guided her body onto her knees, the curtain of her hair draping across the toned skin of his stomach. Kala reasserted herself long enough to twist her hair up behind her. They kissed down along the dark trail of hair but were stopped momentarily, gasping in their tracks as Wolfgang began teasing her slickly swollen folds, tracing around the edge of them lightly with two fingers, his face so close she could feel his breath warm against her tender skin. She heard him chuckle as their moans twined against Hernando’s stomach.

Wolfgang paused in his ministrations briefly as Lito began working her mouth in a rhythm around Hernando. 

“That’s definitely Lito,” Hernando commented in a breathy voice from the head of the bed. “I would know that style anywhere.”

Lito and Kala laughed against him and felt him squirm under her at the vibration of the laughter. Kala was slightly shocked at what Lito’s expertise could do with her body in this arena as he adjusted just so to take more of him into her mouth. Part of her was trying to pay attention to how he was doing it when Wolfgang gave up on delicacy and sunk his tongue deep into her, drawing out a deep, gutteral moan and pushing any semblance of logical thought out of her brain. Hernando’s cock slipped out of her mouth. Lito reached out to wrap a hand around it, twisting around the head, but could barely even manage that as Wolfgang worked to lick them right to the edge. He stopped just short of that, pulling back and laughing as her body tensed. Kala could feel Lito’s surprise at the sensation and began to giggle about it herself when Wolfgang leaned in to push them finally over the edge. The waves of pleasure radiated from deep in her as she felt herself almost melting inside her skin, for once not caring what kind of bizarre, reverent noises escaped her mouth. They collapsed forward with her rear still hanging awkwardly in the air.

They rolled to the side, breathing heavily.

“Did you just finish?” Hernando asked, propping himself up on his elbows.

“I expect there’s more where that came from,” Kala said as Wolfgang wiped his face with his hand, wearing a look of self-satisfaction. “Just give me a minute here.”

“Hernando, you have got to try that someday,” Lito said and Kala laughed. 

“Oh, very nice,” Hernando said sarcastically. They drew her body right up alongside Hernando’s, draping an arm over him to pull him in closer.

“I don’t think I have a skeleton anymore,” Lito mumbled with a laugh. Wolfgang took a long swig of champagne out of the bottle and lay back down on the bed, spooning Kala’s body, stroking the hair back that was stuck to her forehead with sweat. Through the drapes, they caught the frame of a flash of lightning. 

“Are you still in the bathroom at the club?” Wolfgang asked with a bemused chuckle.

“It’s a single stall, very elegant. There’s, I think it’s jasmine in a vase by the sink.”

“Are you on the floor?”

“Well, where else do you expect me to be when my legs don’t work anymore, Señor Elefante?” Lito demanded limply, “The tile here is so nice and cool and this bed is so, so comfy.”

“Are you in the bathroom?” Hernando asked, having missed the entire conversation.

“Isn’t that what I was just saying?” Lito said and then Kala laughed and turned her body to face Wolfgang, kissing him deeply as their legs tangled together. They reached behind to urge Hernando up onto his side, pressing her butt up against him. He began working his hips back against her, his cock sliding along the length of her cheeks. Wolfgang reached an arm across her and pulled her up on top of him in a single fluid motion as he shifted onto his back. Kala led as they slowly lowered her body onto him, his hands settling onto her waist as she set a rhythm.

“Are you fucking him now?” Hernando asked, watching fascinatedly from beside. Kala was a little startled by his candor about it.

“There’s room for you, too,” Lito whispered in a way that made Kala shiver. “Do you want to be inside me, mi amor?”

“Is this okay, Canelita?” Lito asked. “I mean, it seems to be working out pretty well for you so far, right?”

Kala flopped forward against Wolfgang’s chest and they both started laughing.

“It really takes special skill to make someone blush with someone already inside them, you know,” Kala said.

“I have a very specific set of skills,” said Lito, arching an eyebrow. “So, what do you say?”

For as many times and ways as she and Wolfgang had made love, for as much as she felt full with him right this moment, all of that had been through their connection. Kala tried to disguise a twitch of worry in the back of her head. It was the same worry that had whispered in her head the first time she and Wolfgang had come together, of horror stories half-spoken, of pain and blood. She brought her hands to rest under her chin on his chest as she looked to his face. His eyes assured her now as his words and hands had assured her then that he would do everything in his power to make this easy and good.

“I don’t exactly know what’s going to happen, but I think so,” she said, not wanting to feed that worry by speaking it. “We stop if I say so, yes?”

“Always,” Lito said with as much seriousness as his drunk brain had put together so far that night.

Hernando gave a puzzled grin watching what seemed to be one person having a conversation with themselves, but got up and opened a suitcase, scattering clothes as he searched. He opened the other one, finally producing a box of condoms and lube.

“I knew those would come in handy,” Lito said as Hernando began to fumble one onto himself. “Here, let me.”

“How are you doing, there, Señor Elefante?” Lito asked Wolfgang, who was reclining patiently with his arms folded behind his head.

“Can’t complain,” he grinned with a little shrug.

“All set, mi amor?” Lito asked. Hernando nodded, kneeling on the bed behind Kala’s body. They leaned forward to kiss Wolfgang deeply, grinding against him with a slight twist in the hip that she knew would make him shiver. He pulled his arms out from behind his head and pulled her face in closer for a moment. She opened her eyes with their noses touching, smiling softly and dipping her forehead against his. He ran his hands along her back in long strokes. 

They pushed up, twisting around to kiss Hernando this time. They reached around to guide him into her.

“Slowly,” she instructed as the tip of him began to press into her. As he slid in with glacial smoothness, Kala and Lito both felt as if the fullness of him and of Wolfgang was one in the same. 

“I think you two will have to do most of the work from here.” Lito said, propping her body up on fists. “I don’t think we can find an angle that will work for both of you. 

“I have a suspicion this won’t take too long,” Hernando laughed and although he couldn’t hear it, Wolfgang echoed it.

Kala bit her lip marveling at the sensation as the two of them seemed to flow into her body as one, the tense ball of heat pulling into her center again as they both picked up speed. Wolfgang leaned up to take one of her nipples in his mouth, biting gently like he knew she liked when she was close. Hernando leaned in to bite her shoulder like he knew Lito liked when he was close. Lito reached around behind Hernando, trying to rub a finger between his cheeks. Hernando gasped and groaned as Lito found a sweet spot and finished. Wolfgang paused to give him a moment to withdraw and fall to the bed before wrapping an arm around Kala and flipping her onto her back on the bed. The tension and pleasure cycling between them finally burst in a wave of release that left Kala unsure of which body she belonged in. 

As she collapsed back on the bed, she found herself unable to stop laughing. She had a sense that she and Lito were setting each other off in waves of giggles. On either side of her, Wolfgang and Hernando both stroked the hair from her face.

“You know, I think I like long hair on you,” Hernando said, twisting a piece of hair idly around his finger where he lay. “Have you ever tried growing it out, querido?”

“I could never grow hair as nice as this,” Lito said between giggle fits. Kala was pleasantly flattered. “On my head, it grows like unruly wire.”

“Too bad,” Hernando said, leaning over to kiss them both on her lips. 

“I should probably go see what’s going on out there,” Lito said. “Maybe I can come home now, I don’t actually know how long I’ve been away.”

Lito leaned over and kissed Hernando deeply.

“Until later, mi amor,” Lito said and then Kala found herself solely in charge of her own mind again. 

“Is he gone?” Hernando asked. Kala nodded. She looked over at the clock. 10:04. 

“I should probably get going, too,” Wolfgang said, his hand behind her head lifting her face towards his. When she opened her eyes all that remained of him was the taste on her lips.

“Are we alone now?” Hernando said. He’d wiggled himself under the blanket. Kala suddenly felt self-conscious of her nudity. Their eyes met across the bed and they both burst into a fit of laughing. It seemed the only thing that could break the awkwardness of the moment.

“So that happened,” he said. “Dios mio.”

“Do you mind if I take a shower before I leave?” Kala asked.

“Of course not. Just warn me if you’re going to use up all the towels.”

“Of course.” She said politely as she walked around, trying to sort out her clothes from the tornado that Hernando created trying to find the condoms. She finally found everything except her bra, deciding it wasn’t that important right now.

Kala laughed at her reflection in the mirror as she stepped into the bathroom: her hair disheveled, red-purple bite marks lining one side her collarbone. She washed and dressed quickly, her body still shuddering with the occasional aftershock. 

Hernando was wearing loose pajama pants, reading something on his phone by the time she got out of the bathroom. He’d picked up and folded most of the clothes from the floor.

“I found your thingie in the bed,” he said, pointing to the bra, which he had folded as neatly as possible and set on a chair. She tucked the scrap of chocolate brown fabric in her purse. 

“Are the bite marks here visible?” She asked, pointing to her collarbone.

“Let me take a closer look,” he said, adjusting his glasses as he stood up and stepped towards her.

“No, not really, but if you want to borrow a scarf to make sure, I think I can find one,” he said. “I’m sorry, I think that was my fault.”

“No it’s alright. I have makeup at home,” she said as he sifted through the clothes he’d stacked on the chair.

“You sure?” He asked, offering her a red scarf that closely matched her trousers. 

“I guess. I can give it back when I see you next,” she said, heading for the door.

“Well, thank you for dinner and conversation, and, uh, yeah,” he said. She nodded.

“So, week in Goa?” He said and she laughed again because she wasn’t sure how else to respond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I literally wrote my senior linguistics thesis on pronouns and I had trouble figuring out what to do with pronouns in this chapter. Working through the mechanics of this was fascinating, though. I can't say this was part of the chapter I initially envisioned, but characters take strange turns on you sometimes. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Thanks again to PreRaphaelites for sifting through 10k+ words with me on this chapter and the last. Yet again, the conversations that come out of this remind me of some of the biggest reasons I write here.


	11. Sion Hill Fort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I know that my parents respect my judgment around this in a broad sense,” Kala said with confidence as they started to walk through the garden at the bottom of the hill where the fort was perched. “If I never were to marry, I don’t think they would try to push me into it that hard. My father would never have said that to me directly unless it was supporting a decision I had made. I think that’s what’s difficult about it right now - as if that’s what he really thinks but would not say to me. And I know that, to some degree, that’s a matter of respect, but-”
> 
> “It still hurts. I understand,” Lito tied off the thread she had left hanging.

Kala stood just outside the door of her family’s restaurant, her arms folded in front of her, one of her hands idly twirling the corner of the scarf Hernando had sent her home with last night around a finger. She wasn’t worried about Lito & Hernando finding the restaurant, confident that Lito could give directions to the driver like he was giving directions to his own home. If she was honest with herself, she was really waiting to meet them outside, before her family did, for her own comfort. 

Her family had been as understanding as they could have when she told them. They’d spoken briefly with Sun and Capheus on Skype, marveling at the way they could both deftly switch between Hindi, Marathi and English as the conversation required, happily accepting compliments on the food the two of them had tried while visiting Kala. They’d spoken with Lito and Hernando briefly the same way, just long enough to see them in their kitchen making dinner. Mexico City - DF as she’d come to think of it as well - was nearly a full 12 hours off from Mumbai, so it had been difficult to sort out a time.

She had steered them away from meeting everyone at once. For very different reasons, she wasn’t ready for them to meet Wolfgang or to meet Will yet. Were the reasons all that different? Both of them represented the danger that was possible, in their own ways. She wasn’t even sure if they could meet Will, given the level of seclusion he still occupied. She had explained that they were eight, and she didn’t want the absences of those two to seem significant in any way. She knew they would need to meet everyone eventually. Family was family, after all.

The street hummed gently with the lull of a late Saturday morning - about quiet as the neighborhood got with the sun out. The highway nearby faded into a humming concrete whisper-song. The day’s heat hadn’t fully picked up yet. Even the air was uninterested in hurrying anywhere right now, still recuperating from the drenching rain released late the night before. 

The rain last night had left Kala drenched as she walked in a little after eleven, which gave easy cover to her shower-wet hair and her immediate neck to toe-covering costume change. She’d had a cursory back and forth with Ananda over text about the movie on the train ride back so she could say with some authority when asked that it hadn’t been one of Abhishek’s best, but that there were still some good songs in it before begging off to bed.

Sleep had been slow to come to her that night. She’d ended up unpacking a second blanket for her bed. Some combination of having been caught in the rain and the turn the night’s activity had taken had left her with an erratic shiver that didn’t want to seem to let her go. But the twitch of memory in her body wasn’t something she was entirely ready to dismiss either. The weight of the blankets was soothing as she snuggled deep into the bed, feeling her own warmth reflected back at her. 

The same feeling twisted her belly with a nervous excitement. Notes from medical textbooks burned into her brain whispered reminders, “Secretion or administration of oxytocin in humans appears to enhance trust and cooperation within socially-close groups.” There was a rational, neurochemical explanation for how she felt right now. There always was. And yet, it still always managed to feel bigger than that, as if she held a tiny seed in her hand that she was using to explain a sunflower, a field of sunflowers. 

Kala had come to expect to the lack of privacy afforded by her connections; learned how to cope with stepping into the wrong room at awkward times, into the wrong body at awkward times. She’d become accustomed to the flutters of sensation that visited her throughout the day. 

This - this had been different. Kala felt a heavy warmth next to her in the bed that stopped her in her thought. She grimaced slightly as she rolled to the right without thinking and into a cold spot. The chill on her leg melted away almost instantly as she felt an arm drape sleepily across her waist under the blanket and pull her in close against the body that went with it. The cars outside merged with the whirring nocturnal lullaby of chirping insects. A second, more delicate hand stroked her arm gently and then was still again, fingertips resting lightly against her skin. She couldn’t say for certain which bed she was in or with whom without disturbing her bedfellows. She began to piece together clues, but as sleep began to pull her under, she decided she was content just to let herself be held like that and let the wave close over her.

She knew the cab was coming before she could see it. She caught a flash of Lito hotly debating with the driver about where to turn and then she saw the cab itself, a snub-nosed, black and yellow Maruti, coming towards her on the street.

As the cab pulled closer she worried briefly about whether it would be strange seeing them today, after - a clear image of the plate of ripe fruit leapt into her mind and she could almost taste the fragrantly ripe mango again. The scarf twisted between her fingers again.

Hernando got out first as Lito finished paying the driver.

“Buenos,” he greeted her, kissing each cheek politely. “Espero que el champán no te siguió demasiado.”

“No, todo está bien,” she assured him. “A little tired, perhaps, but no ill effects.”

“Excellent,” he said, smiling gently as he briefly fingered another corner of the scarf. “Our friend here seems to be feeling it a little today.”

Kala watched Lito lumber to the curb, sunglasses sitting atop his head. She thought about how much more champagne he must have had than her, feeling a thick heaviness course through her.

“Good morning,” he said, offering her the same cursory greeting. “You slept well?”

“Eventually,” she said. “You?”

Through the blunt weight of his hangover, the corner of Lito’s mouth turned up slyly. Kala rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Oh, before you go in,” Kala said at a secretive hush. “I told them that you’re married. I hope that’s not a problem. I just think they’ll understand better if they think about it that way.”

Lito gave Hernando a look Kala couldn’t fully read but came off as a certain kind of self-satisfaction she didn’t care to investigate just then. Hernando rolled his eyes and sighed a little sourly.

“Won’t they look for a ring or some such thing?” Hernando whispered nervously.

“Hindus don’t typically wear wedding rings - it’s not traditionally part of the ceremony - so I don’t think they will,” Kala said hopefully. Hernando pursed his lips tightly, but nodded. Kala took a deep breath as she turned towards the door. 

Her parents both rose from their seats as Kala walked through the door with Lito and Hernando, hugging each of them tightly. Her sister, Daya, had been caught up at the university.

“Which one of you is it that is my Kala’s brother?” Her father asked warmly.

“Ah, I am,” Lito said as bashfully as Kala thought she’d ever seen him.

“Welcome, my son,” he said warmly as he hugged him again. Lito seemed surprised, taking him a moment to reciprocate his embrace. “You know, I never got to have a son, and now I hear that I have four. What fortune brings us together!” 

As Kala watched, she was surprised how deeply it made her feel for her parents to address them as family. She felt herself starting to tear up and realized that Lito himself looked a bit moist around his eyes. She sensed an almost impenetrably tangled ball of memory caught in his throat, caught a fleeting image of a half-filled glass and a lit candle, flickering in front of a man’s photograph.

“Are you hungry?” Her father asked as he released Lito, still looking him over and squeezing his arms approvingly.

“Oh, yes,” Lito said. “I- we haven’t gotten to eat yet today.”

Kala noticed Hernando standing to the side, looking polite but a little lost, his hands folded in front of him, and suddenly remembered.

“ _Ham angrejee bolana chaahie,_ ” Kala said, “We should speak English. Hernando has many skills, but he cannot speak every language I do like Lito can. His English is very good.”

“Ah, of course. My apologies, Hernando. Shall we to the table?” He asked.

“Yes of course,” Hernando smiled and nodded. 

“Kala, can get you get everyone some tea? Unless you prefer coffee, that is,” her father interjected. “I will be back with the poha and the idli in a few minutes. They don’t take very long to finish cooking, but they are nowhere near as good after sitting around too long.”

“Tea and coffee are both fine,” Lito said.

“Same for me, thanks,” Hernando said as Kala walked over to the counter pour out some tea for them. “Would you mind if I come see the kitchen?” He asked. “I can help or stay out of the way as much as you need but I am always curious to see new techniques in the kitchen.”

“Of course,” her father replied. “I don’t see why not.” And with that, they disappeared behind the counter.

“More tea, mataji?” Kala asked her mother.

“Not right now, dear,” she said and Kala slid a mug across the table to Lito as he sat down with a light sigh of relief. 

“Thank you,” he said as he reached for the mug. 

“So, you are here to make a movie in Mumbai?” Kala’s mother asked and Kala felt a little strange as she watched Lito sit up just a little straighter and tighten his face into the mask he wore for interviews. She knew her mother couldn’t quite feel it as a performance. She wasn’t even sure Lito recognized it as such either.

“Yes, it’s exciting to be working in such a vibrant film capital such as this.”

“Is there anything you can tell me about the movie?” She asked. “Whom are you working with?”

Kala had been afraid of this. She herself had been curious about the inner workings of Film City, but she could also feel the degree to which this became a chore for Lito. She watched as he turned out names and platitudes about the people he’d seen drunk - or at least the kind of silly sober people get around drunk people - last night. Watching him tired and in his guarded professional mode made her feel a little uncomfortable.

As she was thinking about how well he seemed to sell his story here, she felt him turn his eyes to her to signal just enough for her notice that he’d heard what she was thinking.

Hernando returned with Kala’s father not long after, deep in some kind of animated conversation that, as far as Kala could tell, was mostly about coconuts. Her father carried a plate heaped with steaming, golden poha. Hernando carried the idli on a tray studded with small chutney dishes.

“That smells incredible,” Lito said as they set down the food on the table, though Kala could feel the uncertain gurgle in his stomach. 

“Please, go ahead and take some,” her father urged, distributing plates. 

“You have to try this sauce,” Hernando pushed, directing Lito to the coconut chutney.

Kala smiled watching Hernando and her father push food on others, content to watch them in their shared element. She was glad to see their common passion for the kitchen and for showing their love for others through food connecting them. She had been so focused on how the nature of the relationships - both the one that connected Lito to Hernando and the one that tied her to Lito - would affect the way they approached this that she hadn’t thought about all the other things that connected them. The pile of food shrank away as they talked and laughed. 

“Your parents must be so proud of you,” Kala heard her mother say to Lito as she reached for one of the last two pillowy idli. She winced as she first heard it, taking a bite she hoped would mask the expression. She had never spoken with him about the family he grew up with, only caught off-handed glimpses. The web of memory there seemed impenetrably dense, a forest guarded by thorns.

“I wish that were that simple,” Lito said, washing the words down with a big sip of milky-sweet spiced tea. “My father passed away when I was 15.”

Both of her parents scrambled to coo apologies, but Lito shrugged them off.

“Don’t worry. In truth, it’s okay. He wasn't really around much after I was little, so I only ever knew him so well. He traveled a lot for his work; he was a dancer. I think the only thing he ever saw me act in outside the house was a nativity play at church.

“And my mother, you know, she’s very enthusiastic about my movies, but I think she believes more of what the magazines tell her about my life than what I do. She won’t speak ill of Hernando, but she still seems to think this is a phase that I'll grow out of, even now. At some point, it's not worth worrying an old woman with a truth she does not want.”

“But your wedding, surely she must have come to that?” Her mother asked.

“It really was not that much of a wedding. Because of my work, all of this must remain a secret from the public. You know, for the time being at least. We signed papers at the city hall and then Hernando cooked the most amazing dinner at home. But, as you know of course, a marriage is much more than a wedding. It is all of the small ways that we show our respect and support and love for each other that builds and grows every day. Someday we will have all of the beautiful things, but for now, we still have the most beautiful thing.” 

Although he was addressing her parents’ question with his rhapsodic bullshit, Kala could feel his attention pushing towards Hernando. Kala could feel it as his foot crept over to nudge Hernando’s next to him. She chose to ask later rather than dig in now. 

On the other side of the table, her parents were about ready to start eating out of his hand. 

“You are so right. You know, not everyone here marries for love. I know there are still those who believe it is foolish or impractical to do so. But I think people know their own hearts best. If you know your heart, who am I to question that?” Her mother said, reaching across to grab both Lito and Hernando’s hands and squeeze them.

“There are so many ways that people find each other, but the important thing is that they do find each other like you have,” her father added. “One of the greatest wishes a parent can have for their child is that they find the same joy and fulfillment in family that you have found.”

Kala began wiping intently at a spot of green chutney that had dripped onto the table with her napkin. She didn’t suspect that the comment was meant to reflect on her, but the barb of it dug into her, intentional or no. Part of her wanted to blurt something out about how she had found a kind of joy she didn’t even know existed with Wolfgang. Instead, she pursed her lips and kept silent, pulling the napkin into her lap and twisting it between her fingers there. Not only were they not ready to learn about that relationship, but something about it seemed naive to the conversation at hand. She realized that she couldn’t speak to what the minutiae of a day-to-day relationship living with him would look like; what it would feel like. She had considered what going to bed with him every night would mean, but not what it would mean to come home from work to him, to sort laundry with him, to wash dishes with him.

As she looked up from her lap, the first pair of eyes she caught were Hernando’s. He had also been quiet for the duration of Lito’s monologue, seeming a little uncomfortable for reasons that remained muddy. Although their thoughts were not linked, she saw his face take on an apologetic softness of understanding as they saw each other, and it offered her a certain relief.

The soft, close-lipped smile that had emerged on her face bloomed into a gentle chuckle shared with Hernando across the table that left everyone else, Lito included, slightly puzzled.

“Alright, well I told these two I would take them on a tour of Mumbai sights the studio would probably not take them to see,” Kala said. “And probably some that they would, too.”

“When do you think you’ll be returning?”

“I want them to see the view from Chowpatty at dusk, so we will probably be home much later, after dinner,” Kala said.

“The studio’s not taking me to see anything, so I’m excited to see any sights,” Hernando added with a grin. “The pleasure of your company is just an added bonus.”

“Very well, then. We'll see you later tonight. Will we see all of you then?” Her father asked.

“Well, of course we want to see our friend here home safely,” Lito said and Kala bit her lip awkwardly as Lito slipped easily into the role of the protective brother. Normally, this was the kind of comment she would have rolled her eyes and laughed off, but it was a little too close on the heels of her father’s remark about marriage for the comedy in it to reach the surface. 

“I think it's probably more important that I get our foreign guests back to their hotel without incident,” Kala said with a thin lipped smile she hoped came off as gracious. “So we shall see.”

“Well, whatever today brings, and future days as well, you are always welcome here. We will never turn away family,” her father said, directed to Lito and Hernando.

“Oh, I know Kala had spoken with you at some point about spending next week in Goa with us. You are welcome to come visit if you like, too - we have a whole house reserved near the beach in Vagator - but I anticipate you are too busy. Anyway, I just wanted to speak with you directly about it, to make sure it was alright.”

“I can't see where we could object. Kala is a grown woman who knows how to look after herself. Especially traveling with such excellent companions,” her father agreed.

Kala was still fuming quietly as she walked down the street with Lito and Hernando following. Just before they reached the street corner, Kala felt a hand touch her shoulder. She knew it was Lito before she turned around.

“I’m sorry, Canelita - Kala,” he said, thinking twice about using his pet name for her under the circumstances. “I did not intend to demean you with what I said, though I have to admit I hadn’t even considered that it might bother you. It was just a little bit of bullshit that it seemed like would make them feel as comfortable as possible with this trip.”

“It was not just what you said,” Kala replied with a shrug. “My father - I know he said it to be supportive of you, but what he said about a parent’s wish for their child, it felt like he was talking to me, or just about me.” As the words came out, she worried again that there was some kind of selfishness in turning those words towards herself. 

Lito nodded solemnly, appearing to consider her thoughts carefully. 

“Do you want to walk up to the fort?” He asked, pointing in the direction of the crumbling structure on the hill where he knew Kala went to think sometimes. “I know we have important business to take care of at your work today, but that’s not on any kind of tight schedule. Besides, that was one of the places you wanted to take us, no?”

“I still hadn’t decided between that one and the old Bandra Fort, but, yes, I had thought about it,” Kala said as Hernando caught up. “Sure, let’s walk up there. We can start the tour here and take a break for business after this.”

“My mother's favorite topic to bring up is ‘When are you going to give me a grandson, Lito?’” He spoke in a scratchy, high-pitched voice, mimicking her, and then laughed at himself softly. “I swear to you, every time there is a photo of me with some new woman in the magazines, I get a call from her about it. And I know that in some way she means well by it; she has a very specific picture in her mind of the thing that is going to make me happy. Conveniently, it is also the thing that is going to make her happy.”

“I know that my parents respect my judgment around this in a broad sense,” Kala said with confidence as they started to walk through the garden at the bottom of the hill where the fort was perched. “If I never were to marry, I don’t think they would try to push me into it that hard. My father would never have said that to me directly unless it was supporting a decision I had made. I think that’s what’s difficult about it right now - as if that’s what he really thinks but would not say to me. And I know that, to some degree, that’s a matter of respect, but-”

“It still hurts. I understand,” Lito tied off the thread she had left hanging. “And, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think another aspect here is that it is something you still want for yourself. Just not in a way you can explain completely right now.”

“No, you're not wrong, it is,” Kala sighed, feeling the wet heat of tears begin to line her eyes, pausing in her stride and turning towards Lito. “I always pictured myself with my own family in a kind of abstract way. And I liked it - I liked how comforting that thought was. But I don’t think I can’t even explain to myself how it’s going to work right now, what it could look like.”

Lito laughed through a sigh and reached out to squeeze Kala’s hand, “That I understand. I still feel like I’m making this up as I go along. No, I don’t just feel like it - I know I’m making it up. Especially now, on the other side of this unique change.”

“I think the secret is that we’re all making it up as we go along to a greater or lesser degree,” said Hernando, placing a hand on her shoulder. “We just like pretending that we have our shit more together than we do. It’s like we were talking about last night - what happens when you stop doing things just because it’s what you’re expected to do.”

“You know, that fountain is dry most of the year,” Kala said, pointing at a shallow pool to the left of them. The water in it looked surprisingly clear next to the disrepair that characterized most of the garden. “It only ever has water in it this time of year because of the rains.” 

The three were silent for a moment as they took in their surroundings. A few young children chased each other around on the still wet grass. Three women about Kala’s age, presumably the mothers of the kids running around, sat on a stone bench not far off, talking amongst themselves. 

“When I decided not to marry Rajan, I told myself that it was not about choosing between him and Wolfgang, but that it was about choosing myself first,” Kala said, wiping the tears that had never fully erupted from her eyes. “And I still believe in that choice.” She took a deep breath. “But I feel like I lost my view of the future. I knew that was going to happen. Wolfgang knew that - he urged me to take the easier route, away from him and I wouldn’t take it.”

“Are you saying you regret that?” Hernando asked.

“I’m not,” Kala sighed. “I don’t. I know you know what it means to choose a more difficult path like that. But, you steel yourself against the huge problems and then you find yourself ready to cry over tiny things like this.”

“I don’t think this is tiny, but it’s not something you can wall yourself away from, either. There’s too much good in it,” Lito said.

“ _Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,_ ” Hernando said and Kala twisted her face in confusion. “ _Te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo: así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,_ ” As Hernando went on, eyes shut to focus on recalling the words, Lito’s recognition of the poem bloomed in Kala’s mind and she remembered sitting in bed with Hernando as he read animatedly out of a thin, well-worn volume.

“It’s beautiful but I don’t know what it answers,” Kala said, still breathing over the words.

“I think that’s just it - it’s not about answers,” Hernando said. “It’s about accepting love in the form that it takes, and trusting that it will grow from the work you put back into it.”

“I know,” said Kala. “On some level, I do know that. It’s just hard to keep in mind sometimes with all of the different kinds of uncertainty right now. Usually I can push it to the back of my head, but it’s hard to do in a conversation like that one was.”

“Maybe the trip this week will help you feel more clear,” Lito said. “Think about how nice it will be not to have to hide anything for that time. What is it you said? ‘Secret problems are more heartache for everyone’? You need to take your own advice, my friend.”

Kala smiled softly to the cracks in the concrete below her, taking a certain relief in the idea: days without worrying about who could or couldn’t see who she was talking to, without worrying if people could hear what she was talking about.

“You may have a point there,” she said, finally looking up. “So, are we going to climb up the rest of this hill?”

Lito looked up the steep path and made a face.

“Is the other fort you were thinking about so steep?” He asked.

“No, it’s by the water,” she said. 

“Maybe we see that one, then,” said Lito. “What do you think Hernando?”

“I'm sure we can see this one another day,” he agreed. "I'd walk up there, but it sounds like there's more important things to do right now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem Hernando quotes is Pablo Neruda's Sonnet XVII  
> Here's the full text of the poem in English - I've bolded the part quoted in the story.  
> I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz  
> or an arrow of carnations that spreads fire:  
> I love you like certain dark things are loved,  
> secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
> 
> I love you like the plant that does not flower and carries  
> inside itself, hidden, the light of those flowers,  
> and thanks to your love the cramped aroma that  
> ascended from the earth lives obscure in my body
> 
> **I love you without knowing how, nor when, nor from where,**   
>  **I love you directly without problems or pride:**   
>  **I love you like this because I don't know how to love in another manner,**
> 
> **But in this way in which I am not nor are you,**  
>  so close that your hand on my chest is mine,  
> so close that your eyes close with my sleep.
> 
> [Here's the original full text in Spanish.](http://www.poesi.as/pn59017.htm)


	12. Seventh Floor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Where can I be of most use?” Wolfgang asked, leaning back placidly against the wall, arms folded loosely in front of him.
> 
> “Can you be my hands?” She asked as she pictured him focused intently on a lock: trying to keep his breath slow and even so as not to interfere with the slightest sound or feeling of response from it, the minutely delicate adjustments he made. From his memory of it, she could see aspects of what she loved about both parts of her own work, the satisfaction of procedure and the the thrill of analysis, in what he did.

Rasal Pharmaceuticals was headquartered in a towering steel and glass building that was actually not far from the hotel to which she'd delivered Hernando last night. 

Kala felt Lito look over at her as her pulse began to quicken nervously. The timing on certain tests meant she occasionally needed to get into the building on the weekend to attend to that. Getting herself in wouldn't present any trouble, but she wasn't sure how a guest - two guests - would be received on a Saturday.

“We're right by the hotel,” she said. “Maybe you should wait there until we're done with this,” she said to Hernando. He nodded quietly.

“I don't know that I have the stomach for something like this anyway,” he said. “I mean, if you wanted me to be there, if it was important to you, I would come.”

Kala felt Lito slip into her mind just long enough to surreptitiously give Hernando's hand a reassuring squeeze.

“This shouldn't take much more than an hour, mi amor,” Lito said and handed his phone off to Hernando. “Here, take my phone so we can let you know when it's done.”

Hernando took the phone and walked off down the street.

Kala saw Lito look up at the building before them. 

“I’ve never tried to bring a guest in on the weekend before. On weekdays, guests usually just need to sign in at the desk with some kind of official identification,” she said.

“If anyone asks, this is just research for my role,” Lito said. “I mean, there aren’t cameras in the exam rooms, are there?”

“I suppose not,” she said. “I just, my professionalism is very important to me. And I feel as though I already spent a lot of it on both sides of the engagement to Rajan.”

“I would only come to you for my role research because of how seriously you take your professionalism,” Lito said with a smirk. “Shall we?”

Kala pulled her ID badge out of her bag and ran her thumb over it, over the naively awkward, enthusiastic smile she wore in the photo taken when she first started working for the company nearly four years ago, fresh off her master’s work. 

“Do you ever look at pictures of yourself like that and think, ‘Shut up and get over yourself, you silly kid’?” Lito asked.

“I don’t know that it’s usually my first reaction,” Kala said. “Usually it’s more like, ‘It’ll be okay, you really do know what you’re doing here.’”  
“I suppose it’s often a combination of those two,” Lito said with a thoughtful grin and they headed for the large glass doors. Kala scanned them in on the one set of doors that opened on the weekend. 

A bored-looking, uniformed guard stood up from his chair behind the counter as they walked in. 

“Sign in, sir? Miss?” He asked as their footsteps softly crossed the gleaming dark floor.

“I have a guest today,” Kala presented her ID to the guard, who scanned it and handed it back.

“For Rasal Pharmaceuticals as well?” He asked, tapping clumsily at the keyboard in front of him.

“Yes,” Kala nodded. He typed out something else. She shifted her eyes nervously over towards Lito.

“Identification?” He asked, looking Lito over. “Passport?”

Lito fished his passport out of his pocket and slid it across the desk, leaning forward casually. The guard flipped through, thumbing to the page with his photo. Kala wondered if he could possibly take longer inputting Lito’s information to the computer. The awkward way that he typed, the echo of his keystrokes in the silent marble foyer grated on her, made her want to reach across the counter and type it in for him, just to have it done with. 

As she waited, she folded her hands together in front of her, just out of his view, pressing her fingers against each other, resisting the urge to look for the security cameras she knew were there. Resting against his elbow on the counter, Lito pivoted casually around to face her and threw her a smile as warm and soothing as the atole he sometimes shared with her.

“You know, that scarf looks beautiful on you,” he said with a playful wink. She rolled her eyes, but grinned quietly back at him as she released her hands and felt her body relax just a little bit. She could see precisely what he was trying to do right there, but being able to see the strings he was pulling didn’t actually make it less effective. 

The guard finally did finish entering Lito into his computer and handed him a white plastic badge on a clip as he returned his passport. It looked much like Kala’s, but read ‘visitor’ both in English and Hindi in bold black letters across it. 

“Please wear this badge throughout the building, and return it when you leave,” the guard advised in clipped, precise English. Lito nodded as he clipped the badge to the pocket of his navy-blue button-down. 

“All set? Anything else you need?” Lito asked, smoothing his shirt front.

“No, have a nice day,” the guard replied, looking as if he would prefer they go away so he could sit down again.

Kala led them over to the elevators with a lightness of relief in her step. She pushed the button for the fifth floor, where her desk was, and then pushed the button for the ninth, where they were actually headed. Lito cocked his head as she hit the second button.

“Force of habit,” Kala said. “The lab is on the ninth floor, but I’ve been hitting the button for the fifth floor nearly every day for a few years now, so I do it almost without thinking. Does that ever- no, I suppose it wouldn’t on a movie set.”

“Eh,” Lito shrugged. “They become more alike the more movies you make. I don’t know that there’s any one set where I could find everything with my eyes closed like you could probably do here, but it’s always the same assortment of things. You learn to make certain predictions about what will be where. And some of the movies, you know, they feel like the same thing all over again.”

The doors opened for the fifth floor and they stared silently, awkwardly at the blank beige wall until the elevator doors closed again. As soon as the doors closed, they both broke out in a giggle, Kala with her arms folded in front of her, Lito leaning against the railing at the back of the elevator.

“What was that about?” Kala asked. “Does everyone have that same weird instinct to stop talking when the elevator opens?”

“Elevators are so strange - they feel like such private, little spaces, but the door keeps opening and it feels like you’re being caught at something every time,” Lito laughed.

“No, it’s true,” Kala said, but also read an echo of a memory Lito had called up: the hunger of kissing Hernando in the elevator of their apartment building, frantically pulling apart at the chime announcing the next floor to pretend that they were nothing but friendly neighbors.

The door finally opened at the ninth floor and they stepped out into the hallway and down towards where the lab rooms opened up to the light flooding in at the windows. Kala grabbed a white plastic bin and bustled over to the supply room, swiping her key card again to open the door.

Lito leaned against the doorway as she collected all the supplies she would need in the bin. She felt her stomach begin tightening with worry again. She’d seen this procedure done a handful of times, but she’d only done it herself once and that had also been similarly odd circumstances. She had mostly only been risking herself then, though.

“So, you are sure this kind of test cannot be done while visiting across the connection?” Lito asked.

“Unfortunately, not with a different result,” she said. “Sun and I did some simpler tests to see what was possible in that respect. I tried to type her blood while she was visiting, but each time I came up with my own blood type.”

“And you’re certain they are different types?” He asked.

“I’m B positive, she’s O positive,” Kala said, pausing in collecting materials. “We tried it several times. Then she started making fun of me because of my blood type.”

“What?” Lito looked at her incredulously.

“It’s a Korean thing - I guess a lot of Koreans believe that your blood type determines your personality,” Kala said. “Almost like astrology.”

“I suppose it isn’t any stranger than that,” Lito said. 

“I don’t know, astrology at least has centuries of tradition behind it. Blood typing as a concept is barely a hundred years old,” Kala mused. 

“So what kind of things was she saying about you?” Lito asked with a smirk.

“Type B is supposed to be the most irresponsible blood type, guided by passions rather than logic,” she said.

“Well, she does kind of have you there,” Lito said with a chuckle and Kala nearly threw the bundle of vials she was holding at him before laughing along with him. She looked back down at the vials in her hand as she stilled herself. She wished she could say that this would be totally routine, but the fact of the matter was that she was almost never the one collecting the samples she used in her research. Even that wasn’t an everyday occurrence. She took a deep breath and looked over at Lito, still resting against the open doorway.

“Alright, we should do this if we’re going to,” she said and he nodded solemnly. 

“Do you want me to get that?” He asked as she brushed past him out the door with the bin.

“Thanks, but I’ve got it,” she said, tucking the bin onto her hip as she walked back towards the elevator. In the elevator, he pressed the button for the seventh floor before she could even ask.

They were silent for the short elevator ride and as they walked into one of the exam rooms on the seventh floor. Kala could feel even Lito’s veneer of nonchalance cracking a little.

“Do you want to go first or should I?” She asked as she started laying out all of the supplies on the counter in a careful row: syringes, lidocaine, iodine swabs, long collection needles, gauze, vials, bandaids.

“Does it really matter?” He asked, and Kala felt his eyes drawn to the two long needles in their sterile packages and looked at them herself. 

“Let’s do this without any body switching complications first,” she said. “Why don’t you go ahead and take your shirt and your trousers off.”

“Are you trying to get me naked again so soon?” He asked with a resigned chuckle and Kala felt the tips of her ears growing hot.

“As I recall, I was the naked one,” she said with a snort, pleased to be able to at least volley back.

“Eh, there wasn't much difference, was there?” He said, unbuttoning the fitted, navy blue shirt he wore.

“I suppose not,” she said as he slid out of the shirt and folded it onto the chair by the desk..

“Do you want a gown?” She asked as he tugged the white undershirt he was wearing over his head as well. He shook his head dismissively as he stepped out of his fitted black trousers. He folded them on the chair with the rest and climbed up to sit on the paper lined table in his black briefs. As he sat eyeing the supplies lined up on the counter, his playful swagger seemed to have melted away.

“I don’t really like needles either,” she said in response to his nervous posture. “Don’t worry, though. I’m not going to tell you it’s nothing, but it’s not as bad as you might imagine. The last time, when Sun was helping me with this, it felt more strange than painful. We’ll make sure the puncture site is thoroughly numb before beginning the main procedure.” 

Lito nodded, but Kala could still feel the tension he was holding in his body as he sat quietly while she turned to slip on a pair of blue nitrile exam gloves.

When she turned back she was surprised to see Sun sitting next to Lito on the exam table, wearing the running shorts and sports bra she usually wore for her workout at home.

“I don’t mind being the one on the table if it helps,” Sun said. “The sample still registers as coming from you, correct?”

“The evidence seems to suggest that, yes,” Kala said. “Although I don’t think any of us is going to entirely avoid some sensation of it, regardless of which one of us is on the table.” 

Sun shrugged and Lito looked over at her.

“I feel like if I let that happen, I’m not fulfilling my obligation to Will,” Lito said.

“”You don’t owe him any more than the rest of us do,” scoffed Sun. 

“Besides, you've done the hardest part,” added Kala. “You're actually here. No one else has managed that.”

“You really don't mind?” He asked.

“It needs to happen,” Sun shrugged, her face calm. “But you already know that. You wouldn't be sitting here in your underwear if you didn't.”

“True,” he said and a flash of his usual sly humor rose into his face. “I'd probably be sitting somewhere else in my underwear,”.

“Or without it,” added Kala with a smirk, starting to draw up lidocaine into one of the syringes. The paper rustled under Lito as he fell to the side, laughing in relief. She peeked over and saw Sun's face curling into an approvingly bemused smile.

Lito got up from the exam table as Sun shifted down onto her side, the paper crinkling brittly under her as she settled. 

“If you’re ready to start, I’m going to clean the area.” Kala ripped open the top of one of the iodine swab packets. “This might feel a bit cold. Ready?”

“Let’s just get this done,” said Sun and Kala began swabbing her lower back in circles with the iodine. She focused intently on the gentle ridges of Sun’s spine that showed as she lay curled with her knees up. She turned back to get the anesthetic while it dried. She had faith in the precision of her lab technique, in the steadiness of her hand, but she had rarely came into contact with human subjects since she had been a grad student and certainly no one as close to her as this.

Kala tried to shield out as much as possible as she worked. There was a special satisfaction in watching the parts of a process like this come together as they should, the feeling of being absorbed by each individual task in front of her, almost as if she were a part of a smoothly-running machine. She was so engrossed that she only marginally noticed the numbness spreading in her lower back, the strange echo of pinpoint pressure as she slowly inserted the longer needle between Sun’s lower vertebrae. Lito watched nervously as she drew off 30 mL of clear cerebrospinal fluid into a glass vial labeled with his initials.

“It’s strange to think that after all that, it just needs a band-aid,” he said as Kala plastered a bandaid over a folded piece of gauze onto Sun’s back, a bullseye to the sickly-golden iodine ring that surrounded it. Kala heard Sun laugh under her breath from where she still lay on her side, facing away from them.

“All clear?” Sun asked.

“Clear,” Kala said. Sun turned and sat up slowly.

“So, you’re next?” Sun asked, turning to Kala. She took a deep breath and nodded.

“So you can help me with…you know,” Lito addressed Sun. 

“It can’t be any more awkward than when there was only one of us here,” Sun answered as Kala reorganized the materials, lining them up in order for the next round. As she prepped the anesthetic shot, she felt warmth radiating close to her. She turned her head to see Wolfgang standing by her left shoulder and her mouth fell into the soft, relaxed smile his presence often pulled out of her. She capped the needle and set it down. She turned towards him, feeling her skin tingle as she brushed against his arm.

Her attention pulled her in next to him on the blue velour sofa in Tyotya Nadia’s living room. She found herself nestled between him and Felix, sprawled out on opposite sides of the couch in front of the television, watching some kind of cartoon.

“Fuck, man, I’ve totally been that guy before,” Felix cackled, watching a cartoon wolf attempt to open a beer bottle on every available surface. “You sure this is a kids’ show?”

Wolfgang smiled softly in response, looking at Kala warmly, then turned back to laugh as the wolf was attacked by a carphone. The warmth of the couch was inviting as she sat curled beside him; opportunities just to sit and relax with him were far and few between. Before she could think about it much more, they were back in the tiny exam room in Mumbai, which was beginning to feel crowded with the four of them there.

“So that’s why my butt fell asleep on the sofa,” Wolfgang said as he paused to look over the instruments gathered on the counter. He picked up the bottle of lidocaine and read over it, as the rest of them laughed. Kala thought she caught a tiny satisfied smirk out of view of the other two, and added one of her own. Sun was gone when she turned around.

“How much longer before this wears off?” Lito asked. 

“I was quite generous with the anesthetic, so it could be two to three hours,” Kala said. Lito sighed. “But remember, we made a plan for this recovery period.”

“Right. Lie flat. Movie. Hernando feeds us strawberries and chocolate,” Lito repeated, still standing in his underwear. Kala noticed that she could see the iodine and bandage on his back now, unsure of when that might have appeared.

“A little incentive to get this finished,” she said and took a deep breath as she slipped off her flats and set them together by the exam table, starting to get undressed.

“Where can I be of most use?” Wolfgang asked, leaning back placidly against the wall, arms folded loosely in front of him.

“Can you be my hands?” She asked as she pictured him focused intently on a lock: trying to keep his breath slow and even so as not to interfere with the slightest sound or feeling of response from it, the minutely delicate adjustments he made. From his memory of it, she could see aspects of what she loved about both parts of her own work, the satisfaction of procedure and the the thrill of analysis, in what he did. 

She saw him run his eyes down the line of equipment thoughtfully.

“Alright, if that’s what you want,” he said with a deep breath. She knew that breath. It was as close as he would get to admitting uncertainty without flatly refusing. On the other hand, he was not one for giving up halfway through if something proved more difficult.

She continued undressing, folding and stacking her clothes with Lito’s on the chair beside the exam table.

“Why don’t you lie down on the floor for now, Lito,” Kala said, climbing up onto the crinkling exam table paper dressed only in her underwear. “The research is unclear about to what degree lying flat for the next few hours after this procedure can actually decrease the chance of side effects, but it can’t hurt.”

“In that case, can you toss me my clothes?” He asked. Wolfgang sorted his clothes off the bottom of the pile and threw them over casually. Rather than put them on as Kala expected, he sat down and fashioned a pillow for himself out of the folded garments before lying back, staring up at the drab drop-tile ceiling.

She settled down onto her side, drawing her knees up to her chest as her eyes fell into soft focus on the beige wall across from her, taking her own deep breath as she heard the snap of gloves behind her. Wolfgang delicately counted down the ridges of her spine to her sacrum, then back up, his gloved finger tapping gently against each vertebra. 

“It’s here, right?” He pressed a fingertip in the space between two ridges just above the level of her hips. 

“That’s right,” she said and as she started to feel warm and flush, wondered if having him do this was going to break her concentration. As soon as the cool iodine hit her skin, the acrid smell of it in the back of her nose, she was jolted back into awareness of the clinical nature of the procedure. Wolfgang, for his part, was calmly professional in his ministrations, applying the laser focus and delicate hand he would to any other fine work in much the way she had hoped.

“So what exactly do you hope to find?” Lito asked from where he lay. “Or at least, what do you expect to find?”

“Based on the results of the last samples, it seems as though there is a significant amount of endogenous DMT in, well, at least in my system,” Kala said. “It’s long been speculated that mammalian brains produce a certain amount of it, and a number of recent studies seem to support this idea, but neither the place nor manner in which the compound is produced, nor the purpose it serves, are quite so clear. That was the most notable thing, but there were also elevated levels of a few other notable compounds with the same precursors.”

Lito made small talk from the floor as Wolfgang continued working in focused silence, breaking it only to ask her about how the anesthetic was working and to alert her before any invasive steps.  
As he removed the gloves after bandaging the tiny wound, his hand finally stopped to rest gently on her arm and she found herself curled on the couch in Russia again. Wolfgang put his arm around her.

“Is Lego some kind of competitive sport in Russia?” Felix asked, looking confused at the game show he was watching now.

“I don’t know, man,” Wolfgang laughed, then turned his attention to Kala. “How are you feeling?” He said in a near whisper. 

“What?” Said Felix. “Did you say something?”

“Oh, ah, I was talking to Kala,” he replied as bashfully as she’d ever seen him. 

“Mm hmm,” Felix grunted with the tongue-in-cheek dismissiveness he always did, throwing a long look along the curve of his friend’s arm resting on the back of the couch almost as if he was looking right at her. He turned back to the television.

“So?” Wolfgang asked again.

“Tired. I didn't sleep enough last night and then I think I wound myself up too much thinking about this,” she said, leaning into him, savoring the casual laziness of the moment. “What is happening on this show?” She asked as the host held up the Lego creations and described them in words she only half understood.

“I don’t really know,” he said.

“I wish I could just stay here and rest like this,” she said as her brain began to construct a fantasy around this moment of spending the afternoon here with no particular pressure or plans, except maybe cooking dinner later. 

“So stay,” he said. “I can make you a cup of tea if you like.” Kala shook her head, chewing her lip. 

“I need to get back to Lito, get us out of the building and back to the hotel to rest,” she said, thinking she may never have wanted a cup of tea more than in that moment. “Maybe I’ll find you again when I’m lying down later.”

“I suppose we can both hope,” he said and then she was back on her side on the exam table. She slowly brought herself upright. Lito was finishing putting his clothes back on.

“Were you gone with him, Canelita?” He asked. She nodded as she continued chewing her lip. 

“We were just sitting on the couch watching television and it was just,” she searched for a precise word but found herself coming up short, “nice. Like we were any other people. Like it was normal. I know it seems silly but-”

“No, I understand,” Lito cut her off. Kala realized he probably knew that feeling at least as well as she did and nodded silently as she began putting her own clothes back on. 

“He was going to make me tea,” Kala said distantly and Lito replied with a smile she didn’t often see from him, broad and shining without carrying any kind of double entendre.

“Well, I can’t promise tea, but I do know where a beautiful man is waiting to feed us chocolate and strawberries,” he said as Kala collected the sample vials and they left the room behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's actually been stewing for a while. I feel like I took some risks on the mechanics in this one, but I find all of that fascinating to work out. Hit me up if you want to discuss/argue sensate mechanics.


	13. Fairytale/Superhero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re moving from superheroes to fairytales,” Sun said with a curl in her lip. “I’m not very good at fairytales.”
> 
> “But superheroes can fall in love, too,” Amondi protested. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Sometimes they fall in love each other and sometimes they fall in love with regular people. Even Wonder Woman has her Steve - well, sometimes. And Jean Grey is married to Cyclops - to Scott.”
> 
> “Those are stories,” Sun said, crossing her feet loosely in front of her and reaching for her water again.
> 
> “Are you avoiding my question on purpose?” Amondi asked.

“Don’t worry about throwing that punch. You’re not going to hurt me,” Sun reassured Amondi as they ran through a simply-choreographed sparring drill. “Again,” she said, stepping back out of the attack she’d been holding. She took a breath, kihapped, and fluidly pushed back into a firmly anchored attack stance, throwing a punch into nowhere at the same time. She held the pose perfectly still for Amondi to counter into. 

“Right foot forward,” Sun called out, “Block! Punch!” Amondi ran through Sun’s instructions, the punch snapping softly to a few inches in front of her face.

“Better,” Sun said, “your extension was more clear, more decisive there.”

They ran the drill a few more times before Sun finally stood up, fully relaxed her stance and reached for her water bottle. 

“Can we run another one?” Amondi asked eagerly.

“How are your superpowers?” Sun asked, looking for signs of fatigue in the girl’s face as she sipped the water gingerly. Amondi’s forehead shone with sweat and the tiny tendrils of hair that escaped her braids at the temples curled damply, but her eyes were still bright more than hour into their practice together. 

“Still extra super,” Amondi replied brightly. The truth was that Sun was the one who felt off, but couldn’t bring herself to end practice on her own account. It was something she’d never been able to do.

“Alright then, we’ll run another one of these before we cool down and stretch,” Sun said evenly. “I don’t want you to wear yourself out too much for later.”

“Too much for what?” Amondi asked with an air of dismissiveness. “What am I going to miss that can’t wait if I’m tired later?”

Sun shrugged. It was precisely the same kind of logic she had used herself many times before, which made it quite clear how difficult it would be to argue. In her time, she’d worked out through a variety of different ailments from hangovers to the flu. She was confident in her ability to keep practicing, but the exhausted twist of heaviness lingering in her stomach made her ready to stop as soon as she could convince Amondi that it was time. 

She had been feeling off in much this way since taking Lito's place on the exam table as Kala took a sample of cerebrospinal fluid from him the weekend before. She’d heard that hangover-like symptoms like these were a potential side-effect of the procedure but hadn’t experienced anything like it the last time she been the one on the table for it. Other than a little soreness in her back in the hours following, the last one had passed without any after-effects. Perhaps it was the combination of empathetic pain for two people, she thought, imagining the discomfort both Lito and Kala must be feeling for it to reach her in this way. Even Capheus had been feeling echoes of it when he woke up in the morning the last few days. They had found that their ability to distinguish between their own senses and memories took more work first thing in the morning, much like sorting out what is and is not a dream just after waking.

She took another small sip of water, swirling it around to fully wet her mouth before swallowing, and a deep breath in hopes of stilling her stomach before assuming her attack stance once more.

“Try leading with your left foot this time,” Sun advised. “The block is still with the left hand, but comes at the arm from the outside instead of the inside. Punch lower, towards the ribs.”

Sun breathed herself through the last round of drills, finally leading Amondi into the stretching that always closed out their practice. Without the focused control she exerted over her body in her drill stance, she briefly felt worse as she bent at the waist, her fingers pinned under her toes. It was as if her stomach was protesting being upended.

“Are you and Capheus going to get married?” Amondi asked as they both stood, hanging upside down towards their feet.

“I,” Sun began, startled by the question as her stomach flipped, gurgling angrily at the thought as she switched the cross of her legs. “I don’t know. It’s not something we’ve discussed. In all truth I haven’t known him very long. That’s not the kind of decision one wants to make lightly.”

“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” The girl asked, half question, half dreamy assertion. Sun had noted the way Amondi had looked at Capheus - and at her, to a different degree - since she’d arrived. It was something approaching a schoolgirl crush, but she hadn’t seen quite that kind of mooning, wide-eyed look from the girl before she had physically been in Nairobi, when she had visited the bus from prison. It was almost as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her until she had realized that he and Sun were together. She watched them almost like one of her series, as if it were a means of trying on romance from a safe distance.

“Love is a very powerful word,” Sun said, hoping the bitter taste in her mouth as she spoke didn’t carry too far. “I’ve always thought about telling someone you love them like a very serious promise.” 

“But, you-” Amondi began, drooping slightly. 

“He’s very special to me,” Sun interrupted, almost apologetically. “I do care about him a great deal.”

“I know,” Amondi said with an authority that Sun wasn’t sure how to read. It almost made her laugh. Sun rolled slowly up to standing, feeling her vertebrae stack up on top of each other. She concentrated on finding the spot between two vertebrae, low on her back, where Kala had taken the sample, a bit dismayed at not finding the tiny flash of pain as she rolled through her lower back. She started stretching out her arms as Amondi followed her movements and they stretched in silence for a short time.

“Did you ever fall in love before?” Amondi asked after they were sitting on the floor, each of them with their feet pressed together. 

“You’re moving from superheroes to fairytales,” Sun said with a curl in her lip. “I’m not very good at fairytales.”

“But superheroes can fall in love, too,” Amondi protested. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Sometimes they fall in love with each other and sometimes they fall in love with regular people. Even Wonder Woman has her Steve - well, sometimes. And Jean Grey is married to Cyclops - to Scott.”

“Those are stories,” Sun said, crossing her feet loosely in front of her and reaching for her water again.

“Are you avoiding my question on purpose?” Amondi asked and Sun worked the water around her mouth again as she tried to plan a response. Part of her wished for someone else to appear and feed the girl the story she wanted, so that she didn’t have to talk about the truth, or even whatever version on the truth provided her sufficient cover. Another part of her, that had come to acknowledge the kind of nebulous kinship that had developed between them, felt like she owed Amondi some degree of honesty in her answer. The truth of it was something she didn’t like discussing for the same reason she wouldn’t own up to cutting a practice short because she wasn’t feeling well.

“I still think you’re looking for a fairytale. I just don’t have one,” protested Sun, but Amondi looked at her with an expression that demanded some kind of explanation. Sun chewed the inside of her lip.

“I was in love once,” she said tiredly. Even saying it tasted papery and slightly bitter on her tongue. “Before,” she added and watched Amondi’s smile blossom with a little giggle, a tiny relief to Sun’s thoughts.

“And,” said Amondi, leaning towards Sun over her crossed legs to rest her elbows on the floor, hands cradling her face.

“And then we weren’t,” Sun said. “See, no story.”

“But you haven’t told me anything!” Said Amondi, pushing herself up from the floor. “You haven’t told me about where and when it was, how you knew him. You haven’t told me whether he was in love with you, too. You haven’t even told me his name.”

“Why does his name matter?” Sun said, grasping about in her mind for a suitably American name. Amondi just sighed exasperatedly.

“His name was Steve,” she said, using the first American sounding name that came to her mind outside of the cluster. 

“It was not, you just made that up because we were talking about Steve Trevor just now,” Amondi said.

“Do you want to tell the story?” Sun asked and Amondi scowled quietly at her. “I met him at the dojang at the university. He had come over from Korea to study. So you’re right, Steve wasn’t his actual name. But it was what most people called him.”

“How did you know you were in love with him?” Amondi asked. _How could I not know_ , thought Sun. Even now she could remember the creeping ache in her body at the sight of him, the flush that came over her when his attention turned towards her, the way she could almost feel it when he walked into a room.

“I felt special when he was near me. Whatever I did with him - talking or sparring or anything - I always wanted to keep doing that as long as I could,” she said tersely.

“And he was in love with you, too?” Amondi asked.

“It’s difficult to say. He said he was. For the most part, he acted like he was. There was a time where it felt like we did almost everything together,” Sun said and Amondi smiled quietly to herself as she considered this.

“So what happened?” 

“He fell in love with someone else,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. She set her eyes softly towards the freeweights behind where Amondi sat as she tried to keep her face still. Even now, nearly ten years later, it felt odd to describe the whole of it that simply. There was a strange emptiness in the way the memory echoed around her between the spare words, as if it were an old room rarely visited. 

“But that’s not supposed to happen,” Amondi said, looking frustrated. 

“I don’t know that ‘supposed to’ counts for very much in human relationships,” Sun said dryly, trying to fold away her thoughts about it. The memories had been difficult to ignore in the past few months. In the numbness of the immediate aftermath, she had thrown herself into her studies, her practice, anything that kept her mind and body occupied. She had shifted towards kickboxing from taekwondo to avoid him, to avoid the ghosts of him and of herself that waited at the university dojang. She had been angry at herself as much as at him for letting her trust get away from her. It seemed easier, somehow, than being sad. She shrugged. “I warned you it wasn’t a very good fairytale.”

Amondi nodded, looking blankly in the direction of the mirrored wall from where she was sprawled on the floor, though it was clear her eyes were cast far beyond her own reflection in the moment.

Sun chewed the inside of her lip as she watched Amondi’s distant stare, trying to think of something to bring up to pull her back. It was difficult enough to remove her own mind from the subject once opened.

“Should we go see if Mama Akinyi has some fruit cut up for us like last time?” Sun said, dragging herself up off of the floor. Amondi looked at her with a very small, closed smile as she pushed herself up. 

“That's not going to happen with you and Capheus, is it?” Amondi asked with a tremor of worry in her voice.

“This is different,” said Sun, breathing deeply, thinking of the times Capheus had told her he loved her and she had only been able to smile hopefully and hold him close in response. “That was a long time ago.” _I'm not as stupid as I was then,_ she thought. _I know better than to make promises I’m not certain can be kept._ “Besides, I’m still here, aren’t I?” 

She smiled softly and Amondi nodded.

“Are you still studying Egyptian myths with Miss Sophie?” Sun asked as they walked out, before Amondi could dig deeper into the previous topic. She remembered that Amondi had been quite excited about this last they’d spoken about it. It was part of a larger study they were doing on the geography, history and cultures of the Nile River watershed. It sounded far more interesting than Sun’s memory of studying the geography of Africa in school.

Sun half-listened to Amondi tell her about Sekhmet and Hathor as they emerged into the rich wood and light of the foyer. Amondi’s father was standing there looking at something on a tablet with an Indian woman in a well-tailored, heather-gray suit. He lit up as he saw his daughter enter the room.

 _“Ong’era matin!”_ He greeted her, reaching to put an arm around her shoulder. “How was your lesson?” 

“ _Baba,_ I’m all sweaty!” Amondi protested, squirming away from him but smiling up at him brightly. “It was fun.”

“That’s all you have to tell me?” He asked with a little chuckle. “What did you learn today?”

“If you punch, punch like you mean it. Even in practice,” Amondi reported and her father laughed more broadly. Sun considered the girl’s summary of their work with slight wry smile, confused at how she had pieced together that message out of their work together.

“That is a very important lesson,” he said, briefly turning his warm smile up at Sun. “It will serve you well in all kinds of situations. Why don’t you go wash up and then I think Mama Akinyi has something sweet for you.”

“Alright, baba,” Amondi said. “But who is your guest?”

Kabaka looked back at the woman, patiently cradling the tablet close to her chest as she waited.

“This is Miss Agarwal. She is visiting us from India for a few days,” he explained with a certain excitement. “Miss Agarwal, I’d like to introduce my daughter, Amondi.”

She extended her hand crisply and Agarwal fumbled the tablet into her other arm to shake the girl’s hand.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Amondi. It’s very generous of you and your father to welcome me into your home like this,” Agarwal said. As she stood up, her eyes fixed on Sun, as if she hadn’t seen her standing there until just now. “And you are?”

“This is Miss Susan. She’s my taekwondo tutor,” Amondi jumped in before Sun could respond.

“Park,” Sun said, unfolding her hands from behind her back to offer one. “Susan Park.”

“Jaya Agarwal,” she responded with a firm, professional grip as well-tailored as her suit. Sun studied the woman’s face briefly as they shook hands. Regardless of the gracious pleasantries she had offered Amondi, the clearest thing Sun read in her face was a steely focus.

“Very well, then,” Kabaka said, his fingers already on the edge of the tablet. “Why don’t you ladies go wash up and change and we’ll see you soon.”

Sun nodded and followed Amondi up the stairs towards the spare room. As soon as the door was closed, Sun pulled her phone out of her gym bag and sat down in the warm, sunny spot on the bed. She searched the woman’s name, but it seemed that the name was common enough for her cursory search to be unproductive. 

The surveillance on Kabaka had been largely unthrilling so far. Agarwal was the first person aside from any of the staff to have visited the house since they had tapped into his security feed the week before. Given his background, it was unsurprising that he tended to keep his business well away from his home. He did maintain an office in the house, but in the time they’d been watching, Mama Akinyi was the only other person who had ever spent any time in there.

In exploring the house’s network when setting up the remote link to the security cameras, Nomi had discovered that the house’s phone system was internet-based. She had made quick work of setting up surveillance of those calls as well. They had so far proved as uninteresting as the surveillance footage, though. The logged numbers were almost exclusively local, and all the calls they had listened to were primarily focused on logistical matters relating to the house. They had archived the sound files in case there seemed to be more relevant messages coded into the mundane talk about the upkeep of the house, but for now they seemed to provide nothing of use. 

They had noticed, though, that Mr. Kabaka’s voice was pointedly absent from most of the calls. His commitment to separating his business from his home appeared to extend to his phone communication as well. 

As she looked up from the phone, Sun realized she was no longer sitting on the bed in Kabaka’s spare room, but on on the edge of a sofa in an airy, colorfully tiled room. A breeze carried the briny tang of the sea quietly into the room. Shadows of the palm trees outside danced across the floor as the trees rustled gently. Her eyes searched the room for any clue as to what or whom had brought her here. She saw Kala, draped across the elegantly curved dark wood of a chair, engrossed in something on the tablet in front of her as she twirled one of her long curls around a finger on her other hand.

Still dressed in her white dobok, Sun stood up and walked towards Kala. Kala looked up and smiled warmly as she recognized Sun approaching. 

“Those are the results from the tests from last weekend, aren’t they?” Sun asked as she picked up the tablet from Kala’s lap, skimming through tables of figures she only half-comprehended at a glance. 

Kala nodded, then stretched and sat up in the chair. 

“Any insight yet?” Sun asked.

“Nothing too useful yet,” Kala said. “The samples both show similarly elevated levels of the same neurotransmitters I saw last time, so there at least seems to be a correlation with those, but so far it is just that.”

“Sun!” Lito walked in wearing a wine-colored sarong tied at his hips, carrying two tall glasses full of something thick and orange. He set them down on the glass-topped table next to Kala’s chair to grab Sun up in a big hug.

“I hope you’re wearing something under that,” said Sun as she patted his back gently, wondering how he was finding all this energy, assuming her own discomfort was an echo of his.

“Since when are you shy about a little nudity?” Lito said, pulling back from her with playful smirk. Kala giggled. Lito turned away from her, untying the sarong as he cast a sly look back at her over his shoulder, holding the sheet of fabric out behind him as he gyrated behind it. He spotted his eyes directly at her as he flipped around to reveal the black swim trunks he had been wearing underneath the sarong and then doubled over laughing, the sarong falling to the floor.

“You seem like you’re doing really well,” Sun said, watching his antics with a certain puzzled surprise. She’d expected to find the both of them laying low with magnified versions of the exhaustion and low-grade nausea she’d been feeling. “How are you managing the side effects of the spinal tap?” Sun asked. “Or is it just you?” She said, turning to Kala. 

Kala and Lito looked at each other, a certain confusion crossing their faces. Lito shrugged dismissively.

“What side effects?” Kala asked, turning back towards Sun. She felt a sickening numbness ooze from her belly out into the rest of her body, and stumbled back into the chair a few steps behind her. 

“But, you must,” Sun began and Kala shook her head, lips pursed and brow knotted as her eyes darted around Sun’s face. “I’ve been exhausted since Saturday and my stomach, it’s,” she searched for a neutral word, “unsteady.” 

“I mean, I’ve felt that way when I first wake up a number of days, but I assumed it was just that I’ve been drinking more wine in the evening than I’m accustomed to here,” Kala said with a light, tiny giggle. “But you know how mornings can be these days. Do we know if anyone is ill?”

“It’s not just the morning for me,” Sun said, her eyes studying the intricate, blue and white filigree designs glazed onto the tiles in the floor. “It’s worse in the morning, but it has been following me throughout the day in varying degrees.”

“That is odd,” Kala agreed. “Any headache?”

“Small headaches here and there, but not severe or consistent,” Sun said. 

“Are you sure you weren’t feeling any of these symptoms before last Saturday?” Kala asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, look, the plot's finally arrived.
> 
> Seriously, some of these bits dropped in here have been sitting around since I started writing this back in August. Has it really been that long? 
> 
> Thanks again to PreRaphaelites for keeping me on point with how martial arts actually work so that I can let Sun teach, and generally keeping me on the path moving forward and trusting my characters.


	14. Innovations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The most effective lie lives right next door to the truth,” Lito whispered into Sun’s ear, squatting just beside her. Sun tried not to turn to him as she listened. “Look at her posture right now - she’s a critical listener and she’s definitely taking notes, but all she really cares about at the moment is that you’re not competition. She’s going to eat up what you tell her so long as it tells her you’re not a threat to her business. Keep being vague and she’ll dig harder.”

There was no one in sight as Sun came down the stairs after her quick shower. Even James, who usually drove her to and from the house on lesson days, was nowhere to be seen. The silence of the foyer made her self-conscious about the sound of her feet on the stairs, even in her soft-soled sandals. 

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, Sun could see Kabaka and Agarwal out on the stone patio behind the house and traced through the dining room out to the large, double glass doors that opened onto the patio. Agarwal looked diminutive next to Kabaka, despite the moderate heels she wore. As she stepped out into onto the sandstone pavers, the warm, sweet perfume of the immaculately kept flower beds drifted over to her. As she deeply inhaled through her nose, she felt a wave of relaxation flowing into her tired shoulders and down through her body. It was immediately followed by another brief wave of nausea. She scowled in frustration as she stood still, trying to settle herself, knowing the worst of it would pass in a moment. This wasn't the first time this week she had smelled something pleasant and had it echo revulsion this way.

Agarwal turned around first, followed quickly by Kabaka. Each dressed in a different shade of professional gray and holding a rocks glass with a tastefully small amount of amber-colored liquor, they looked like a dispatch from Sun’s last world, the one that seemed to have melted directly into air. Even after having changed out of her workout gear, she still felt underdressed in the green blouse and colorful printed skirt she’d adopted from Shiro. It was more than underdressed; it was more like being unarmored.

“Miss Park, so glad you could join us. Can I get you a scotch? Lagavulin?” He asked.

“Thank you, but no,” she said, a brief memory of the smoky bite on her tongue. Her father had favored Islay scotches, too. “I would but my...I’m not feeling one hundred percent right now. I’ll take some ginger tea if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Of course, so sorry to hear that,” he said, gesturing over James, who had been waiting quietly just outside the door. He spoke softly to James, “Can you ask the kitchen for a ginger tea for the lady?”

“No milk, please,” Sun added meekly, remembering that ginger tea here meant something a bit different than she would have expected at home. 

“Would you like to sit?” He asked, gesturing towards the wicker furniture set out towards the edge of the patio. Sun nodded, and the three of them set down in the woven armchairs facing the deep greens, reds and golds of the garden.

Kabaka’s sudden transition from barely being a ghost in his own house while Sun was there to treating her like a welcome guest seemed oddly pointed. Capheus had mentioned something about Kabaka’s interest in discussing her - or, rather, Susan’s - travels and an open offer to have them over for dinner, so perhaps his absence had simply been a matter of schedules not matching up so far. The absence of any evidence of his professional life couldn’t be circumstantial, though. His graciousness as a host in and of itself wasn’t entirely puzzling, but coupled with the arrival of someone who was clearly here on business, it felt like throwing back several curtains all at once. Sun couldn’t entirely discern which side of each of those curtains she was on.

“Miss Agarwal was just telling me that if we were in Mumbai right now, where’s she’s visiting from, it would probably be raining,” he said and Sun felt a chill much like she had when Capheus had finally shared what Kabaka had told him about visiting that city.

“It’s still the monsoon season there, is that right?” Sun cleared her throat and addressed Agarwal.

“That’s correct,” she replied with an air of surprise in her voice. “Have you ever been?”

“I was actually in Mumbai just before arriving in Nairobi,” Sun said with a cautious nod. “In July.”

“So you know what it can be like, although if you were there in July you didn’t catch the worst of it,” Agarwal said. “In June, there were days it got bad enough to stop the trains from running. I believe there was a 36 hour period in which over 20 centimeters of rain fell in parts of the city.”

“I remember,” said Sun, suddenly inundated with Kala’s memories of it: staying home from work, seeing people in the streets standing knee-deep in water, watching the rain-swollen tide slosh over the seawalls on the news.

“Oh, were you there in June as well?”

“Oh, no,” said Sun, backpedaling a little awkwardly as her wheels spun in the timeline she’d created for herself. “But I remember seeing pictures, hearing stories about it from people I spoke with when I was there in July. It was still quite fresh in people’s memories. I almost feel like I was there.”

“Yes, well,” Agarwal led, leaning forward in her seat and considering Sun across her drink as she took a slow but tiny sip. “It was certainly worth telling stories about.”

“You know, I don’t think it rained a single day I was there,” Kabaka said with a resonant laugh.

“Well, you were there in February, if memory serves me correctly,” Agarwal said with an authoritative smirk creeping into the corner of her mouth.

“Yes, I believe that’s right,” Kabaka agreed.

“Well, there you are,” Agarwal said. “That’s the driest part of the year for us.”

“That’s the wettest part of the year in southern California,” Sun volunteered before she could tell from whose memory it had percolated up.

James returned with a cup of spicy-scented, thickly dark tea on a saucer, setting it down on the glass-topped table around which the three chairs were arranged in a soft arch. 

“Thank you,” she said, turning to look up at him and finding herself squinting into the bright sun just behind him. She saw his silhouette nod quietly above her before stepping back out of sight.

“So what initially brought you to Nairobi, Miss Park? And to Mumbai for that matter?” Agarwal asked her, relaxing back into her chair, gesturing with her glass as Sun brought the teacup to her face. She closed her eyes as she inhaled the fragrant steam, already feeling a certain relief at the pungent smell of the ginger. Her eyes flickered open at Agarwal’s question. Before she could consciously acknowledge the stress of the question, she saw Lito standing to her left, just behind Kabaka’s chair. He was still dressed in just his bathing suit. Without speaking, he tilted his head slightly, raising an eyebrow into something of a question mark. Sun bowed her head gently in a way she hoped would communicate both acknowledgment and assent.

“Well, you see, my father died earlier this year,” Lito began as Sun felt the odd, almost weightless detachment of sharing her body. “He had wanted his ashes to go back to Korea, where he was born. I was the only one left at home to make such a journey.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Agarwal said.

“Thank you,” Lito said, taking a sip of the sweet, strong tea. “My father and I - we had something of complicated relationship, but, you know, he was family. You know how it is.” Sun felt Lito taking careful notice of Agarwal’s face, watching her eyes as he spoke. She nodded, wearing an interested, but largely neutral expression.

“Anyhow, between that and a number of other things that were happening, I decided to take some time to travel and,” Lito gestured more broadly with the cup, “to reevaluate some of the ways I had prioritized things in my life.”

“So, sort of an _Eat, Pray, Love_ type of scenario?” Agarwal asked with a snort and Sun could feel a ripple of disdain radiating off of her. “Mr. Kabaka mentioned just before you joined us out here about what is keeping you in Nairobi and how he came to make your acquaintance.”

“You know, you’re not the first person to bring that up but I can’t say that occurred to me when I was first making plans,” Lito said, a smile curling into the corner of his mouth as he punted the question out into the grass much more gracefully than Sun suspected she would have done. 

“And you?” Lito asked as Sun felt the pleasant burn of the ginger in the back of her throat. “What brings you to Nairobi? Surely not the same kind of circumstance?”

“If I may,” Kabaka interjected, looking to Agarwal.

“Please,” she agreed.

“Miss Agarwal or, rather, the company she represents, is looking into build a pharmaceutical research and manufacturing center here in Nairobi,” he said, a glow of pride in his face. “By the plans, it would be one of the largest and most advanced pharmaceutical research facilities on the continent - certainly the largest outside of South Africa, at least.”

“Well, that is very exciting,” Lito said, voice holding steady as the two of them digested that information. No one part of it was suspect on its own, but the various connections between the different features raised concerns. The feeling didn’t help Sun’s frustration at Agarwal’s seeming condescension towards her. Sun pushed forward to reclaim her speaking role, “The Kenyan economy is prime for that kind of development at the moment. It’s a wise investment.”

“Very true,” Kabaka nodded. Agarwal looked over her again, her dark eyes narrowing, and took another sip of her drink, the lone, worn-down ice cube tinkling hollowly against the side of her glass.

“We believe so, too,” she agreed. “But we’re also getting some notable incentives through a UN program to promote certain kinds of pharmaceutical research here.”

“I assume that means research into HIV treatment,” Sun said.

“And malaria, actually,” Agarwal said. “But the facility would not be limited to research in those areas.”

“Sounds to be beneficial to all parties involved,” Sun said, looking between the two of them. Her eyes lingered on Kabaka, wondering about the nature of his role in this venture, but thinking it unwise to ask that so directly right now. “Is this through a UNIDO partnership?” Sun asked, recalling their involvement in a project her company had helped fund in Thailand a few years ago. “I thought they were more focused on the manufacturing side of the industry rather than development.”

“You seem quite well versed in this topic,” Agarwal said, uncrossing her legs and sitting up straight. “I’m guessing you were not making your living teaching martial arts back in the US. Were you working in the pharmaceutical industry?”

“No,” Sun shook her head, cutting herself off before going into more detail. She wasn’t quite sure what, if anything, to read into Agarwal’s sudden shift from dismissive to attentive, but it made her feel highly conscious of each piece of information she doled out.

“What do you, or, did you do, then?” Agrawal asked.

“The most effective lie lives right next door to the truth,” Lito whispered into Sun’s ear, squatting just beside her. Sun tried not to turn to him as she listened. “Look at her posture right now - she’s a critical listener and she’s definitely taking notes, but all she really cares about at the moment is that you’re not competition. She’s going to eat up what you tell her so long as it tells her you’re not a threat to her business. Keep being vague and she’ll dig harder.”

“I was in the financial sector. Part of me would have loved to be able to focus on martial arts full time but I think my father would have disowned me,” Sun said.

“Anyone I would have heard of?” Agarwal asked. She shot Kabaka a stern look before settling back in her seat, though her casual demeanor seemed a bit forced at this point.

“Probably not,” said Sun casually, taking a long sip of tea. She could almost feel Agarwal’s anticipation, getting a certain satisfaction out of watching the businesswoman shift in her seat. “The last firm I worked with was called the Babsot Group. Small VC firm based out of LA, mostly backing tech startups. But they're not expecting me back even when I return to the US. If I return. I may just focus on martial arts full time now that there's no one to disown me for it. I haven't decided yet. I don’t really have to right now.”

Sun pursed her lips as she finished speaking, running them through her teeth before taking another small, slow sip of her tea. Agarwal seemed to relax a little, appearing satisfied with the unguarded disinterest of Sun’s response. 

Agarwal’s complacent posture reassured her. For the first time since she’d lain eyes on Kabaka’s associate, she felt as though she had steady footing. Between that and the way the ginger tea had soothed her queasiness for the moment, she felt about as settled as she had all day. She still had a tangle of questions she was trying to keep masked. If she could just extract the name of Agarwal’s company, she would be satisfied for the time being.

“Just ask her,” Lito said quietly from beside her. Sun looked down into her teacup again, swirling the tea in the cup as she considered his suggestion. Her tea was starting to run low. “She’s feeling comfortable right now. Don’t push too hard, but she just asked you the same question, so it will probably come off as polite small talk.”

“And what company are you with?” Sun asked finally.

“The parent company is called Innovations. We have a number of branches in different locations around the world,” Agarwal said.

“All pharmaceuticals or,” Sun began.

“For the most part,” Agarwal cut her off, “But it sounds like you came here in part to get away from business as usual, so I won’t bore you with details. Did you make any other interesting stops on your way here from LA?”

“I’ll go look it up,” said Lito.

It seemed clear at this point that pushing farther into business talk with Agarwal would dismantle the complacent rapport Sun had managed to build with her so she fed her some stories from a trip she had taken to Bangkok a few years ago. 

“I should probably be getting home,” Sun said, standing up and grabbing the small backpack she carried her. “Thank you for the tea. I’m actually feeling a little better.”

“Excellent,” Kabaka said, standing up with her. Agarwal followed suit a moment later. “Though I was hoping you and Capheus could join Miss Agarwal and me for dinner here tonight. A big piece of what she is here to do is to get a better sense of the city and the people here to be able to better picture how the company would fit in here.”

“That’s a very kind offer,” Sun said, thinking about the quickest route to the door. “I’m feeling better than I was, but it still might be better for me to stay in tonight. If I’m coming down with something, I would hate to pass it along. And I doubt Capheus will be done with his route by any time you’d like to eat tonight.” 

“I suppose that’s true,” Kabaka said, nodding reflectively. “I forget how relentless a line of work like that can be. I wish he would think more seriously about, well, nevermind. James can take you home.” He gestured to where James had been waiting quietly by the doors.

Sun found herself bowing gently as she stepped away. It was something of an instinct in formal situations such as this, more so the more she felt the need to keep a protectively professional distance from the situation. 

“It was good to meet you, Miss Agarwal. I hope you enjoy your stay here and best of luck with your project,” Sun said.

“Likewise,” Agarwal said, looking Sun over again where she stood in a way that made her feel uncomfortable and exposed, as if she were being sized up for something.

She sighed with relief as she settled into the back seat of the black Highlander. James chuckled under his breath in the front seat.

“So it’s not just me,” Sun said. James didn’t say anything, but she could see his grin in the rearview.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to all the flowering plants of inland Kenya that I read about but didn't name here. I wanted to write up more about Kabaka's gardens, but maybe it's just that I've got gardens on the brain and seedlings spending the nights in my bathtub because it's apparently still too cold for them outside at night.


	15. Measured in Weeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What makes you think this is a promise that you can’t keep?” Riley asked and Sun pulled back, resting her head on her own knees again. Riley stretched her legs out in front of her before pulling them back in. Warm fingers of light seemed to be creeping into the room at the end of the hall, around the edges of the curtains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full, translated text of the lullabies mentioned here available at the end of the chapter.

Sun felt the hand rubbing her back between her shoulders before she could tell whose hand it was. Her eyes stared, unfocused, at the drab tan bathroom tile between her bare feet as she sat on the edge of the bathtub, her arms resting on her legs, waiting. She looked up to see Riley, sitting on the edge of the tub beside her. 

Riley brushed the hair back out of Sun’s face, tucking it behind each ear. Looking around, she realized that she was no longer in her bathroom. The warm light of morning in Nairobi had been replaced with a hollow orange fluorescence. The blue and white tile of this room barely even had the familiarity of a distant memory that she had in the homes of most of the cluster. Riley and Will moved often enough these days that no one place ever quite earned that familiarity. As Sun’s eyes fell into focus on Riley, she noticed the tears hiding in the corners of her tired, red-rimmed eyes, still yet to escape down her cheek.

“Is everything alright?” Sun asked, pushing herself upright, feeling her muscles tighten in anticipation. Riley’s face pushed into a wide smile at the same time that the tears that had slowly collected began to overflow and trail down her cheeks.

“I’m fine - we’re fine,” Riley said, wiping her cheeks with the edge of her palm. “Ugh, I’d almost forgotten about this. I was such a mess until about twelve weeks in.”

Sun looked at her, tilting her head in confusion. Riley’s sentiment began to percolate into her awareness, catching up with the words she had said. As her meaning dawned on Sun, she felt numb and cold, as though all the blood in her body was sinking into her stomach. She had the same odd distance from her body that she did when one of the others was sharing, like being in the backseat of her own body, but she knew there was no one else filling that space right now. It was just empty. She leaned forward and vomited again.

She felt Riley’s fingertips gently scraping the hair back from her temples, holding it back from her face as she hovered over the unfamiliar toilet. She slid down from her seat on the edge of the tub onto the cool tile, hugging her bare knees into her chest. She turned her head to face Riley as it rested atop her knees.

“I can’t,” Sun said, her mind racing so fast that she couldn’t really put together any of the words and images - fragments, really - spinning circles around each other in her head. Riley climbed up on her knees and filled the blue plastic cup sitting by the sink with water, taking a sip to rinse her own mouth out before sliding down against the tub next to her, facing her in a similar pose . 

“This wasn’t in the plan, was it,” Riley said, not bothering to inflect the words as a question, her voice low and soft as she offered her the water, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you didn’t know.” Sun turned her head away, casting her gaze down into the still-dark hallway. The thought had occurred to her more than once in the last few weeks, but she had buried it as deep as she could, shaking off the evidence as circumstantial, inconsequential. Hearing Riley acknowledge it, tying it together with her own experience, it was difficult to ignore the portrait drawn as the various details lined up.

“It’s not as if I wouldn’t have figured it out eventually,” Sun snorted as she turned back to face Riley, taking the cup and setting it on the ground beside her. “It’s not as if it will stop being true if I don’t know about it, if I ignore it.” 

“I suppose that’s true,” Riley said with a sigh. “I remember I was so excited when I first found out. I mean, I was nervous that-”

“I don’t really want to talk about this right now,” Sun interrupted, feeling the blood start to creep back into her extremities, her head still trying to tie itself back together. She rolled a small sip of water around her mouth, grimacing as it reached the acidic rawness in the back of her throat.

“Oh, alright,” Riley said, biting a fingernail quietly for a moment. “Are you feeling, er, is your stomach feeling any better?”

Sun shrugged, still leaning against her folded legs. _No_ , she thought, but was unclear at this point how much of the nausea, how much of the overwhelming exhaustion was from her body and how much from her brain.

“Can I get you anything? I’m sure I have something to calm the stomach,” Riley said, pushing herself up to standing.

“No, it’s alright. It will pass,” Sun said, though she knew it was only partially true. It had been almost a week of this so far, in varying degrees throughout the day. Riley sat back down on the edge of the tub and began rubbing Sun’s back, her open palm wiping gentle circles between her shoulder blades, where her back curved gently over the knees hugged to her chest. As they sat there in silence, Sun felt a tear trace its way down across the side of her nose.

“I didn’t think this was ever going to happen to me,” she said to the wall beyond where Riley sat. “I didn’t think I would ever want this.”

“The last few months have been full of surprises on that scale,” Riley chuckled bleakly through a sniffle. Her tone stilled. “Do you?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said, as honestly as she could. “I can’t quite picture it, but I don’t know that I can picture what my life will look like in a year’s time even without this,” she paused, the phrase hanging in the air as she tried to find a word to identify the situation without naming it, “complication. I remember when I used to feel confident about my grasp on the future, but whatever ability I had to predict what will happen has been out the window for a while, now. It only ever worked before because the future was fairly static. Things that don’t change much are fairly easy to predict.”

“That’s certainly true,” Riley nodded, continuing to rub her back in gentle circles. As some of the tension she held there was released, Sun was reminded of the way her mother would rub her back when she was hurt, sick or upset as a child. Her eyes slid closed and she remembered lying in her bed in the room she had when she was little. Moonlight filtering in through the blinds streaked the only light onto the pale blue wall. In this memory, she must have been no more than eight or nine; her mother still had all her hair, so she must have not been sick yet. Her eyes fell on the painting her mother had done for her when she was very small, a watercolor of Shim Chung emerging from her lotus blossom. The painting still hung in her apartment in Seoul, or at least, as far as she knew, it did. Her mother was singing the lullaby about the baby left in his basket with only the sound of the sea to lull him to sleep while his mother went to go pick oysters. The sound was vivid, but the voice sounded unfamiliar, not quite like her memory of her mother’s. As her eyes opened, she realized Riley was the one singing it.

 _“Badaga bulleo juneun jajang noraee, palbego seureureureu jami deumnida,”_ Riley sang in a soft, sweet voice not far above a whisper. Sun turned her head towards the door again and gave up on trying to hold in the tears that had quietly escaped her eyes, letting them go into unrestrained sobs. She couldn’t even say precisely what it was that was making her cry, but perhaps that was the more important point: it wasn’t any one precise thing. She hadn’t let herself cry like this in as long as she could remember, but certainly not since before any of this began: before her father, before prison, before the cluster. 

_“Eommaneun moraetgireul dallyeo omnida,”_ Riley sang the last line of the song before resting her cheek on Sun’s back, sharing the weight of the moment as they bent under the memories they shared and crying with her.

“I used to sing to Luna before,” Riley said, pausing midsentence as her eyes searched the room, starting to collect tears again. She sat up and wiped her face with the sleeve of her loose, gray sweater. “When she was still inside me,” she finished, smiling somberly. “Lullabies from Iceland are not so friendly as that one, though.”

Sun turned her face back towards Riley, resting it gently back on her knees.

“Most of them involve monsters looking in the window, or the call of dangerous wild things. My favorite, probably the most famous lullaby from Iceland, it sounds lovely, if maybe a little weighty for a child’s song,” Riley said and then sang a few lines in her breathy voice. _“Það er margt sem myrkrið veit, minn er hugur þungur. Oft ég svarta sandinn leit svíða grænan engireit. Í jöklinum hljóða dauðadjúpar sprungur.”_

Sun snorted and sniffled a little laugh, nodding as she considered the song. “Can I have a tissue?” She asked, and Riley handed her a clump of toilet paper. “It’s a bit dark, but it’s a sweet melody,” she shrugged as she wiped her eyes and nose.

“I know, right?” Riley chuckled. “It’s from a play, though. And in the play, it’s the song an outlaw sings to her baby before throwing her into a waterfall while on the run from the law.”

“I think you’ve told me about this song before. That’s - that’s horrifying,” Sun croaked out a broken laugh.

“But it’s a nice melody, no?” said Riley. Sun shrugged. “My mother used to sing it to me. I always found - I still find it quite soothing.”

“I suppose a very small child would only really hear the melody,” Sun said. “By the time they can understand the words, the melody is already so familiar and comforting that it almost doesn’t matter what the words are.”

“Maybe,” Riley said and took another very deep breath, hugging her legs in close again.

“I miss being able to have secrets,” Sun said, after they had sat together in silence for some time. 

“What do you mean by that?” Riley asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor, her hands resting lightly on her plaid flannel knees. 

“I don’t know that it does anyone else much good to know about this yet, but I can’t stop them from knowing now that I know - that you and I know.”

“Does it do them any harm?” 

“I don’t know. Not directly. But it’s a lot to take in all at once,” Sun said, unfolding herself, stretching her bare legs out in front of her. Her feet pressed against the cool row of tile that crept up the bottom edge of the wall. "I don’t know what to think yet. I just wish I could have some time to process this on my own. I’m not ready to deal with everyone else’s opinions about what the right answer is here. I’m not even sure what the question is yet.”

In her mind, she pictured Capheus’s warm smile and tried to push it aside as quickly as possible, wanting desperately not to call him to her right now. There was no way he wouldn’t see this as wholly positive, as cause for immediate celebration. And she couldn’t, she didn’t want to let him down with her own ambivalence to his joy. He’d had to deal with a certain amount of it so far, and had done so graciously, but that was functionally about a word. This was much more than a word.

“I can’t talk to him about it yet,” Sun said, looking Riley directly in the eye. She pushed a deep breath out of her nose. “I can’t. But I don’t know that I have much of a choice.”

“I can’t tell you what to do or what will happen, but I know that what you think and how you feel is of great importance to him,” Riley said. “I mean, he loves you.”

“I know,” said Sun, pulling her legs into her chest and hugging them again, rocking softly back and forth. “That’s the problem.”

“How do you mean?” Riley asked, her face twisted with confusion. 

“That word, it’s something I’ve tried to avoid,” Sun said. “You know, before him, I don’t think I’d had sex with anyone I actually liked for nearly eight years?”

“Why bother with people at that point?” Riley asked. “I mean, there’s plenty of other ways of taking care of yourself in that respect without involving people you don’t fancy.”

“True,” said Sun thoughtfully, thinking of the small, well-curated selection of toys she assumed were still locked away in the drawer to her bedside table. Riley grinned and blushed slightly as they both called them to memory. Sun shrugged and laughed a little bashfully through her nose at the openness of that memory.

“Given my work life, or lives as it were, if you consider fighting to be work, I didn’t really have much time for socialization, nor did I feel any particular drive towards a relationship. It seemed an unnecessary complication,” Sun said. “With those people, it wasn’t really about the physical pleasure, not like that, at least. Most of them were people I fought in matches, virtually all of those were people I had beaten. I think in their minds, particularly with the men, it was a way to try to re-win the fight they had just lost.”

“So what did you get out of it, or was just an extension of the fight for you, too?”

“I couldn’t let them think that beating me would be so simple,” Sun said. “So many of them seemed to think that just convincing me to fuck them constituted a victory they could add to their fight record. It gave me a lot of leverage.”

“Leverage for what?” Riley asked cautiously. Sun shrugged, a corner of her mouth curling up with a satisfied slyness as she called to memory a montage of images of lean, muscled men, flush and glistening with sweat, in a variety of contortions and ligatures, occasionally together.

“I don’t want it to come off wrong. I never pushed anyone to do something they didn’t actually want to do,” Sun said defensively, feeling the slight surge of pride in her past work. “In fact, I think at some points there were a few who sought me out because they were hoping I might suggest certain things. But things that perhaps they wouldn’t suggest to their wives or admit to the guys at the gym that they had done.”

Riley shrugged, chuckling nervously. “I still don’t quite see how this relates to the situation at hand.”

“The whole situation, I think, was wholly predicated on some idea of vulnerability,” Sun said. “As if access to my body was what defined that. But each time, it proved the opposite; it proved that they couldn’t hurt me. I felt unbreakable.”

“I think you and I have very different definitions of terrifying,” said Riley.

“It’s possible,” Sun said, catching Riley’s eyes. “But I don’t know that I’m the brave one, here. Talking people into doing things they want to do requires very little bravery. You,” she said, sighing, almost able to feel the weight in her arms, “I can’t begin to imagine. Once you care about someone that much, to take that away- It would feel like breaking a promise to let go. I don’t know that I- I can’t risk that.”

Riley nodded, chewing the corner of her lip as her eyes began to cloud over. Sun felt her own eyes itch heavily with the weight of the memory.

“I don’t want to make a promise I’m not certain I can keep,” Sun said. “Not to him, not to,” she cut herself off, as if naming the situation was, in and of itself, some kind of commitment.

“I know,” Riley choked out before the tears came again. Sun put an arm around Riley, their foreheads leaning into each other as they shared tears again. Sun couldn’t tell if she was crying for Riley or for herself in that moment.

“You know, it’s easy to think of love simply as a debt that we pay, but,” Riley said in a broken whisper. “It isn’t.”

Sun was quiet with Riley’s words, her eyes closed as the warmth of their foreheads supported one another, their hands clasped together. In her memory, she held her mother’s hand, remembering the promise she had made to her, the weight of it hanging on her head. 

“What makes you think this is a promise that you can’t keep?” Riley asked and Sun pulled back, resting her head on her own knees again. Riley stretched her legs out in front of her before pulling them back in. Warm fingers of light seemed to be creeping into the room at the end of the hall, around the edges of the curtains.

Riley turned towards the door before Sun heard the rustling in the room down the hall as Will woke up with a confused shout.

“Riley?” he called. “Are you here?”

“There in a moment, _ástin mín,_ ” she called back down the hall in a soft voice. Riley turned back to Sun, taking her hand and squeezing it tightly. Getting up to leave, she leaned down and kissed Sun’s forehead before stepping quietly down the bare wood of the hallway towards Will’s voice. Sun stretched out on the floor, flat on her back. The coolness of the tile underneath her skin was a relief as she lie there, and her eyes slid shut.

“I had this dream that I was planting apple trees, but- have you been crying? Are you okay?” she heard Will say in the background.

“It’s nothing,” Riley replied in the distance.

Sun’s hands crept up from the floor and gingerly came to rest on her belly, to what she could no longer ignore. She almost expected something to reach back up and grab her hand as she did, imagining some kind of oozing, sticky monster, although she knew that it couldn't be more than a tiny minnow of a thing right now. Her mind, her heart - she wasn’t quite sure where the one ended and the other began here - ached with a fear that wouldn’t quite land in one place. She had long characterized herself by her toughness - by the beatings she could take from what the world threw at her. Would this just mean dragging someone else into that, or would this be one more person to push behind her and fight for?

Her eyes still closed, she heard footsteps in the hall coming towards her. But the next voice she heard was Shiro’s.

“Are you ready to talk about it yet?” she asked, standing over Sun in the doorway to the bathroom. Sun’s eyes opened to the warm sunlight following Shiro into the room.

“Talk about what?” Sun asked, tilting her head up awkwardly, trying to breathe her face clear.

“You’ve spent every morning this week in that bathroom turning your stomach inside out. You’re dragging yourself around like you haven’t slept in days,” Shiro said, her voice wearing a tone of slight exasperation. “Give me a little bit of credit, child. I carried two of my own; I have some idea what you’re going through. You think it’s coincidence that I’ve had ginger tea ready for you at any moment, even before you ask for it the last few days? And now you’re lying on the bathroom floor, crying. Since when do you cry about anything?”

Sun pushed herself up to sitting, tearing off a wad of toilet paper and wiping her face. She took a deep breath and looked up at Shiro, sure she still looked like hell.

“He doesn’t know yet, does he?” Shiro asked, much more softly, as Sun finally made eye contact with her. 

Sun shook her head no. “I suppose it’s only a matter of time, though,” she shrugged.

“It always is, love,” Shiro sighed, offering Sun a hand up. “I know you can’t really keep a secret from him even if you wanted, but a secret like this is more trouble than it’s worth. Trust me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Island House Baby (섬집아기, trad. Korean lullaby)**  
> [hear the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZbVre11Dqs)  
>  When mama goes to the mudflats to pick oyster  
> Baby remains alone watching the house  
> To a lullaby the ocean sings  
> His arms as a pillow, baby falls asleep.
> 
> While baby is sleeping soundly  
> Seagull’s crying sound throbs her mind  
> Half empty oyster basket on her head,  
> Up the gravel road, Mama comes running home.  
>  
> 
> **Sleep, My Young Darling (Sofðu Unga Ástin Mín, Jóhann Sigurjónsson, 1911)**  
> [hear the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSKNIGwp7Jk)  
>  _This is actually the Icelandic lullaby featured in season 1. I had to rewrite this a smidge after realizing these two characters had already talked about this song._
> 
> Sleep my young love. Outside the rain cries  
> Mother keeps your gold, old leg bones and chest of stones  
> We shall not be awake on dark nights
> 
> The darkness knows so plenty  
> My mind is heavy  
> Often black sands I gazed at  
> burning green meadows  
> In the glacier lives dead deep cracks
> 
> Sleep well, sleep tight  
> Better to wake up later  
> Mother will teach you sooner  
> ’til the sun reaches the horizon  
> That men love, lose, cry and pine for.


	16. Cobwebs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Who the fuck am I to lecture anyone about good decisions?” Wolfgang said and as her mouth bent silently into a smirk, so did his.

Sun woke up with the white sheet tangled around her in a coil. She had spent most of the remainder of the morning resting, drifting in and out of consciousness. As her eyes readjusted to the light, she saw a little gray spider had set up residence in the corner of the window and begun building a web. She lay in bed, watching the tiny creature descend on a thread that would be nearly invisible but for the angle of the light, landing and waving her legs with what seemed to be precise purpose. Every strand lay right where she placed it. There was an industrious elegance to the process, the deliberate construction of the intricate strands. It seemed strange to think how easily it could be - and eventually would be - swept away.

Shiro was busy folding laundry in the living room by the time Sun untangled herself from the sheet and pulled herself from bed, wandering out of the bedroom in the blue running shorts and white undershirt she often wore to bed. Her stomach felt as settled as it had in days, though she wasn’t sure if it was the sleep, the ginger tea she’d had right before it or just where things were in the day’s cycle to thank for that.

“Up to eating something yet?” Shiro asked without any break in the rhythm of the shirt she was folding. 

“I think so,” Sun said.

“Try a banana,” Shiro said, grabbing the next shirt out of the basket. “If that sits well with you, we’ll warm up some of the chicken and sukuma wiki from dinner yesterday.”

Sun leaned against the counter in the kitchen as she ate her banana. She looked out the window, but the courtyard was quiet. Her hand idly came to rub her belly again. Each time she did, she expected to feel something different. She wasn’t sure what to expect, what would comprise evidence that this was actually happening, that this wasn’t just a precarious series of circumstances. Instead, her fingers just met the same skin that had always been there. At least her stomach didn’t seem to be complaining about the banana.

She pulled the big stewpot with the leftovers from the refrigerator and set it over a low flame on the stove. 

“How is that banana doing?” Shiro called from the living room.

“Fine,” Sun called back.

“I couldn’t eat enough bananas when I was pregnant with Capheus,” Shiro said warmly as she joined Sun in the kitchen. “Towards the beginning, there were days I wasn’t up to eating much more than that. Later, there were some days it felt as if it were all I wanted to eat.” She opened the drawer by the stove and got out a large, wooden spoon to stir the pot. “My mother and some of the other women we knew tried to convince me that it wasn’t good to eat bananas when I was pregnant.”

“That seems like odd advice,” said Sun, thinking of the number of times eating bananas had saved her during a long day or after a workout. 

“I thought so, too,” Shiro said, “So I ignored them for the most part. I hid a stash of them behind where we lived.”

“Did they give a reason why you shouldn’t?”

“Something about having too much energy? They were concerned that bananas would make him too big, make delivery difficult,” she said with a certain impatience, pulling a wooden spoon out of a crock on the counter. “But it proved not to be a problem. Who knows, maybe I made him the way he is by eating too many bananas when he was in the womb. In which case, I can only recommend more bananas.” She pointed the spoon emphatically at Sun, her other hand on her hip.

As Shiro grinned with a defiant pride, Sun chuckled warmly. 

“Here, you stir and I’ll make some ugali to go with this,” Shiro said, offering the spoon to Sun. She took it, turning towards the stove as Shiro got out the weathered, tall sided aluminum _sufuria_ she favored for making ugali. She filled it up with water and set it on the stove to boil.

“Do you have any siblings?” Shiro asked as she waited for the water to heat up enough to add the cornmeal. “Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry, I’d forgotten,” Shiro answered herself quickly before Sun could interject. “He’s a big piece of why you’re in this whole mess. I think I had written him off as family, since he doesn't seem to know what that actually means. But I guess if he weren’t family he wouldn’t have been so much trouble.”

“I suppose not,” Sun nodded with a chuckle. “Technically speaking, yes, I have a younger brother.” 

“How much younger than you is he?”

“About two years.”

“Do you remember when your mother was pregnant with him at all?” Shiro asked, beginning to put away dishes that were sitting dry on the drainboard.

“No, not really,” said Sun. “I guess I was too young to remember much. Though, in my first memories of him, he’s also making my life difficult.”

“Oh?” Shiro asked, leaning back against the sink, folding her arms in front of her.

“I remember feeling like he had stolen my mother from me,” Sun said, her mind back in her childhood home. “I had to be quiet because the baby was sleeping, play on my own because _eomma_ needed to take care of the baby. Looking back, it may not have been as unreasonable as it felt at the time. But, then, he never stopped being that way.”

“It’s like that with too many men. They never learn how much effort we spend getting out of their way, how much of ourselves we end up pushing down to make room for them,” she snorted, putting away a few more dishes. 

The water boiling, Shiro pried the lid off of the old, red cookie tin where she kept the cornmeal, grabbing a teacup that she had yet to put away and scooping it in quickly by eye. She moved from scooping to stirring the mash together with bold strokes of the spoon almost as if it were a single, fluid movement.

“I suppose I don’t really remember when my mother was pregnant with my sister, Chelagat, who is two years younger, either,” She said as she stirred the pot briskly, “But my brother, Simon, I was almost six when he was born.”

As Sun watched the cornmeal and water tighten and pull together into a thick, doughy mass, she realized she had never really spent any significant time with anyone who was pregnant. She remembered meeting cousins as infants a hundred days old, but never saw any of her aunts more than once or twice during their pregnancies. She had seen women at work pregnant, but especially because they worked below her, it never really been something they talked about. She had just seen them disappear into their modest, sack-like maternity dresses and then be gone. Sometimes they came back a few months later, as quietly as they had left, other times not. 

Part of that distance was by her own design. Even unmarried, not dating, people spoke to her in terms of, ‘when you have a family,’ not ‘if you have a family.’ She heard it said to young male professionals in those terms as well, but the conditions that followed, even the tone of voice there belied a different set of expectations. He was to provide for his family. She was to pour her attention fully into hers, putting aside any other priorities in deference to her family. Every time she heard it, even when it wasn’t intended to dismiss her, it made her tense up with frustration the same way as when someone insisted on seeing her brother or even her father at work. 

She had done virtually all that she could to push that part of the culture away. It had never felt particularly difficult to separate from herself. Even when she was little, she hadn’t been the kind of girl to dream of the family she would have as a grown-up the way that some did, except in a kind of cursory, experimental way. When she drew her future, she drew her father’s office building. She drew a house with gardens inspired by her mother’s, with different animals outside and in the windows. She drew herself in spaceships with the South Korean flag marked proudly on the side. She had never drawn her children. 

The only time she remembered thinking seriously about it was when she was with Byung-ho as a university student. In her mind, she had spun out a future with him in fragile strands, and mostly liked what she saw. As all that had been wiped away, though, those fragments had been sealed away together carefully, marked as dangerous. She had felt then that she was recommitting herself to her work, both with her father and in the ring. The idea of opening that part of herself up again terrified her. 

“I don’t quite feel like myself like this,” she said to Shiro. It was as close as she could come to explaining her reservations to her, or as much of it as she felt ready to admit. 

“You’ll feel better in a couple weeks,” Shiro assured her, handing her a plate of food. “This is about as bad as it gets. Well, except for that bit at the very end. Most of it’s fine. Tiring sometimes, but magical in a very practical way. You’ll see, at some point it almost becomes a conversation between you and your child in a way that only a mother can know.”

 _Mother,_ Sun repeated in her mind, trying it on. The word sent a tiny shiver slithering awkwardly across her body. 

Shiro spent the rest of lunch talking through stories about odd cravings and behaviors of women she knew, friends and family, during their pregnancies. Sun halfway tuned out, still feeling as though the stories belonged an arm’s length from her.

After lunch, her body felt about as settled as it had all week, but her mind still felt overwhelmed with processing the whole of the situation and where she fit into it. She got dressed and headed outside to take a walk.

The red dust of the side road where their apartment building was located narrowed into a foot path about a kilometer down the road. Sun followed it to where the path led into the trees briefly before opening to a set of fields on the way to another main road.

In the morning’s intermittent sleep, her mind had held together odd threads of a dream. As she walked, she tried to piece together what she recalled of it. She had dreamt she was climbing the stairs that switchbacked up the hill from the river towards Haneul Park, back in Seoul. She was carrying a large egg, almost the size of a pear, as she walked. It was warm in her hands. The color of the egg seemed to shift its color slowly in her hand as she walked, an iridescent orange fading to purple-red to blue-green and back again. Each time she looked at her hands, they seemed to look a little different. She’d say they belonged to someone else, but nothing about the way her body felt seemed different. She was clear they were her hands. Sometimes it was day, sometimes night. As she reached the top she could see the skeletal bowl of an observation deck through the tall, feathered ornamental grasses that waved gently on either side of the path. She realized she needed to deliver the egg to the center of the bowl, but the tall grasses began reaching in towards her. They were trying to brush the egg away from her hands, sweeping into her face and arms. As the grass attacked her, she hugged the egg against her and it seemed to vibrate gently against her body. Each time, she had woken up before she could reach the tower.

As she walked, Sun could hear the road ahead of her, the tops of the cars speeding past above the tall grasses. She didn’t feel like walking along the road just now. All the careful awareness of vehicles in the narrow space seemed like more effort than it was worth. Although edged with the scent of diesel exhaust, the air was mostly fresh here and felt like a relief on the whole of her. Not ready to return home quite yet, she sat on a downed tree trunk not far from the path, grass growing up around it.

The grasses here in her neighborhood in Nairobi weren’t quite as tall as the ornamentals at Haneul, though she suspected that her dream had magnified her view of the park. She remembered going to the park when it was new, when Seoul had been in the throes of preparation for the World Cup. It had been built on top of one of the city’s largest garbage dumps. The site had been such a punchline of a gross disaster before that she had gone more out of morbid curiosity than anything else that first time. Instead, that memory made the transformation all the more magical, a labyrinth of paths through grasses taller than she was. Since then, she’d felt oddly drawn to the place, though it was far enough from the city center that she rarely made it out there. 

“Egg seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it?” said Wolfgang from beside her. She looked over at him where he sat on the log, the sleeves of his navy coveralls tied around his waist, cigarette in his hand. Her eyebrows tilted up skeptically.

“I thought you weren’t smoking anymore,” she said, looking at the cigarette longingly.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too,” he said, staring down at the curled fingers of his hand as he tilted the lit end towards himself. “Until I was again. But I’m finishing what’s left in this pack and then I’m going back to not smoking again.”

“May I, then?” Sun asked, reaching her hand out towards him, fingers splayed. His eyes turned to her as he uncurled his fingers and let her scissor the cigarette out of his hand. Her eyes slid shut as she took a drag, savoring the rich bitterness of the flavor, the crackle of burning paper. When they opened, the scenery had changed, framed by corrugated warehouses and shipping crates, giant yellow-topped cranes hanging over the grimy port water. The large freight vessels seemed to laze in the midday heat as the stagnant air hung close around her. She would swear it was hotter here in St. Petersburg than in Nairobi right now. They sat on a stack of old railroad ties with scrubby grass growing up high around them. 

As she exhaled, the rush of the nicotine through her system was followed by a wave of nausea, her body’s ongoing protest against almost any kind of strong smell. She frowned at the cigarette. Wolfgang, who had felt something of it, chuckled wryly from where he sat. Sun took one more drag defiantly before handing the cigarette back, sighing as she exhaled.

“I shouldn’t be smoking anyway. Especially now,” she said as he took it back.

“Who the fuck am I to lecture anyone about good decisions?” he said and as her mouth bent silently into a smirk, so did his. They sat quietly as Wolfgang took a long drag, exhaling off to the side.

“So, you going to keep it?” he asked nonchalantly, as if he were asking about the other half of a sandwich. 

“I don’t know,” she finally said, sighing. “I don’t even know if I even have other options here.” 

He nodded quietly.

“Did you ever have anything like this come up for you? You ever knock anyone up?” she asked and he shook his head, looking down at the grass in front of him.

“No,” he said, exhaling a stream of smoke above him as a wry grin broke across his face. “Felix did, though. Twice. In one summer.”

“Twice?” Sun chuckled disbelief under her breath. 

“Twice,” he said. “The summer we were nineteen. Neither of them decided to have it, which, I don’t know, it was probably for the best. But he got sort of weird about it.”

“Weird how?” she asked, imagining him lethargic and reclusive, flopped like a squid on ice across the ragged sofa in the apartment in Berlin.

“Hard to say,” he said, his face crinkling into memory. “Lots of little strange things. Like, he kept calling me _babushka_.”

“ _Babushka?_ ” she asked.

“Yeah, most of it was just in small, off-handed remarks, but when we would end up anywhere close to the subject, even if it was just him thinking about it by himself, he would, sort of, lose his shit. He would grab a towel a shirt or something like that and wrap it around his head like a kerchief, start up with this bizarre laugh and then he’d start taunting me,” he said, and Sun remembered it with him, Felix’s eyes huge and wild, hair hanging stringy in his face.

“That is odd, even for Felix,” she said. “I mean, in some ways it’s logical that he would displace some of his discomfort onto you.”

“I think it was rough on him in ways he couldn’t quite place,” he said. “Like, so the first one was with this girl, Sabine, that he’d been seeing for, I don’t know, about a year. It was as long as either of us had ever spent seeing someone. And it really got between them, you know? It wouldn’t have made sense, and they both knew it. I think, based on what he told me when he wasn’t running around with a kerchief on his head, it made him think hard about the future. It forced both of them to look at the future in very concrete terms and I think they realized how shitty they would have been together in the long run. Anyway, they broke up not long after. I think it would have happened anyway, eventually. But, then, I never actually liked Sabine that much, so it didn’t feel like much of a loss to me.”

“And the second time?”

“Eh, we were partying pretty hard that summer. We probably would have been anyway, but I think there was a different sort of edge in it for Felix after the thing with Sabine. Like he was trying to sweat it out of himself or something,” he said, pausing to take another long drag off of his cigarette. “Anyway, things happened and something like two, three months after Sabine he was scraping together money for another clinic visit with some woman he only met the once. Or, twice, I guess. But an abortion isn't really much of a second date.”

“Not really,” Sun said, shaking her head. “Is it hard to get an abortion in Germany?”

“Not if you get to it early,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s a number of weeks, I think, and after that it gets more complicated. I wasn’t directly involved, but it didn’t seem that difficult to get an appointment.”

“ _Babushka,_ ” Sun repeated again. “I get the taking it out on you, but why not _dyadya_ or _dedushka_ or, almost anything else would make more sense.” 

“I don’t think he knew any of those words yet.” Wolfgang shrugged. “ _Babushka_ was one of, like, six Russian words he knew before I brought him here.”

“Weren’t there about a half dozen men in your father’s, or, your uncle’s circle called _Dyadya_ something or _Ded_ something?”

“There were, but I found out recently that he had thought it was just part of their names. Like how so many Frenchmen are Jean-Luc or Jean-Michel or Jean-whatever the fuck. It came up when he found out that Tyotya Nadia’s actual name wasn’t _Tyotya Nadia_ , but just _Nadia_ ,” he said. “But even if he did know those other words, I don’t know that making sense really entered into it. I think he might still have wanted to call me _grandma_.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Sun said. “Did it have any effect on you?”

“ _Babushka_?” He asked puzzledly.

“No, what came before that. With Felix and the two women. I know how close you are. Did it change anything about the way you were doing things?

He sat quietly for a moment.

“I mean, it didn’t change what I was doing for the most part. Not then,” he said and spit on the ground to the side away from her. “I was playing just as hard as he was. We both did a lot of stupid shit. I don’t remember most of it now, some I couldn’t even remember the next day. I don’t know: maybe I was a little more careful, maybe just a little more lucky. It’s certainly lucky it was him and not me. In a lot of ways. Not just for me, but if either one of them had gone through with it and let it turn into a baby, like, the world could use a few more Felixes, you know? The world doesn’t need more of my kind.” He paused, stubbing out what little was left of the cigarette and flicking it into the grass. “So, I guess it didn’t really change what I was doing day to day, but I seriously considered having that problem dealt with permanently around then.”

“What problem?” Sun asked, his implication just outside her grasp.

“The possibility of getting someone pregnant. Sending more of my family into the world to fuck it up,” he said with a bitter chill that Sun felt in her own skin.

“You mean sterilization?” She clarified, slightly surprised at first, but less so the more she thought about it.

Wolfgang nodded, still without looking at her, biting a thumbnail.

“But you didn’t go through with it?” She asked. 

“What doctor is going to take a nineteen year old guy seriously when he comes in and says he never wants to have children?” He said with the dismissive anger he usually reserved for telling stories about his family, finally looking up at her. “He’d be like, ‘Son, I felt that way when I was your age, too. Now, I have these beautiful children and I can’t imagine life without them. Here, take some condoms and see me in fifteen years.’ What would I tell him then? The truth about my family?”

“I actually considered it, too.” Sun said quietly, chewing her lip.

“You did?” He asked, his voice echoing disbelief.

“Not as early as you seemed to come to the idea, but yes,” Sun said. “It was not long after I took over as CFO at the company, so it must have been four or five years ago now. The possibility of pregnancy seemed inconvenient, and it seemed like it would always be inconvenient. I had to work hard enough keeping my edge in the business that any kind of setback in time or in image could become a huge liability.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” he said, fiddling with the half-empty soft pack of Yavas. “So why didn’t you end up going through with it?” 

“In some ways, the same reason I didn’t want to become pregnant: it never seemed like the right time.” She shrugged, trying to revisit where her mind had been at that point. “It’s not a long procedure, but it’s significantly more invasive than yours would have been. It’s typically done under general anesthesia, so it probably would have meant taking a few days off work. I kept on putting it off in my mind and eventually my doctor managed to talk me out of it. She told me she understood why I didn’t want to have a family right then, but kept on coming back to this ‘don’t limit your future’ idea when that was what I was trying to tell her about why I wanted it. But, she also promised that she would help me secure an abortion if it came up, and I went with it.”

“Secure? You make it sound like it’s stolen goods.”

“It is technically illegal. On demand, at least,” Sun explained. “There are generous medical provisions for it that can easily be stretched.”

“I thought your country was part of the 21st century,” he scoffed.

“You can’t measure how modern a country is based just on a single thing like that,” Sun said defensively. 

“I guess not,” he said, scratching his chin. “But it is surprising.”

“I poured my time and myself into that company like a lot of women do with their children. But, I don’t know, can you picture me with a baby?” She asked as if the answer seemed clear, only remembering her current situation as the words finished leaving her mouth. She looked down into her lap, but could feel him looking at her with an intent, apologetic softness.

“I don’t know. I can think of a lot of people I can picture less easily like that,” he said. “And some of them have kids. I can’t see what makes you less qualified than any shithead off the street.”

“I don’t know that it’s even a matter of ability. It took great effort to create distance from it for myself. Accepting this, being okay with it - it feels like I’m betraying that part of who I am,” she said. “Or, at least, that part of who I have been - who I was before all this. When I say that these days, I’m not sure what that means. Is it possible I'm holding this up against an image of myself that doesn't exist anymore?”

“I think that’s true for all of us in some way, but I don’t fucking know,” he said. “I do know that it never seemed worth trying to be done with these fucking things until this connection went live,” he said, tossing the cigarettes off to the side, just out of reach. “I don’t know exactly what that means, but it has to be good, right?”

Sun chewed the inside of her lip, looking out over the port. 

“The practical reasons I was so clear about not wanting something like this before, they’re just not there anymore,” she said. “I know - I believe - I’ll be able to return to Korea at some point, but I can’t even begin to guess when. I have no way of knowing if my place in the company will still be there for me. With my brother in charge, I don’t even know what will be left of the company.”

“Fuck them,” he said. “Let them take care of themselves for a while. They barely listened to you when you were there, just took the credit for what you did. You can’t let what your fucking brother does make this decision for you. Unlike him, at least this thing actually stands a chance of growing the fuck up.”

“ _Valya! Poshli!_ ” called a voice from across the yard. Wolfgang head-checked over his shoulder, pulling his phone out of his pocket to check the time.

“My break’s over,” he said, turning his eyes directly to hers. “Listen, you make whatever choice you feel is best. You’re the one who has to fucking carry this thing. You don’t owe the rest of us shit. Your family - the family that matters - will be there beside you whatever you decide.”

Sitting back on the tree trunk in Nairobi, Sun was reminded of something Kala had told her a little while back. She’d said there was a directly proportional relationship between the relative sincerity of what Wolfgang was saying and how frequently he swore while saying it. In his case, sincerity was rarely at odds with truthfulness, but instead with apathy. 

As she began her way back down the path towards her own road, she kept coming back to what he had said about the company - about her brother - making decisions for her even from here. The idea that they - he - could be pushing something that reached into such deeply personal territory the way that this did stuck in the bottom of Sun’s gut like a dull knife. 

On the surface, the idea was ridiculous. She was fairly confident Joong-Ki had very little personal opinion about whether she had a family or not, possibly with positive leanings because he thought it might make him look good somehow. The company’s board, like her brother, had to be shaken aggressively to take notice of nearly anything she did, much less have an official opinion about it.

She had tried to answer that with her dedication to work, by trying to eliminate any potential cause for them to dismiss her any further. She liked to think that the quality of her work was unarguable, even in as much as most of it was invisible. It made the rest of it easier. As she thought through the rotation of what she did in Seoul, every single thing seemed to be constructed in direct relationship to her work at her father’s company. Even her sideline fighting was a release valve whose presence in her life could be clearly circumscribed away from work. 

It had been her anchor for so long that she wasn’t clear how to hold fast without it, floating and weightless. Her work had been the single largest part of how she had defined herself through her adult life. Even here, she had tried to follow what little news she could find about what was happening with the company. It occurred to her now that company didn’t give a shit that she was gone. Even so, from a distance of ten thousand kilometers, it was still invading even the private spheres of her life - arguably the most private - armed only with passive indifference.

She picked up a stick and started snapping tiny lengths off of the end, as small as she could break between her hands as she walked. She had long thought of herself as someone who would not be dominated, not broken by others. In a number of ways it was how she had become so committed to her work. But there was no strength to be gained in waiting for the company to come to her, by expecting the company to wait for her. The strength she had found in Nairobi had been in reconsidering things she had put aside, consciously or not, in her life before.

Sun decided it was time to start telling her own goddamn story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How many times can you say _babushka_ in a story about a Korean in Nairobi? Apparently, at least five.
> 
> I have to say that the volume of season 2 teasing is making it harder to keep my mind in my post-season 1 world. It isn't even so much the evidence of how out of canon my plot is that's distracting, but some of the more textural elements about the way the cluster relates to one another. I mean, it's not distracting enough to try to avoid finding out about it, but...


	17. Relief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She moved as if uncovering the rich umber of his skin would reveal some kind of definitive truth she’d been searching for all day.

Sun could feel Capheus arriving home before he even reached the door. He worked latest on Fridays, driving the van until midnight before making his way home. Shiro had gone to bed several hours back. Since then, Sun had been curled on the couch in her pajamas with his plaid blanket around her shoulders, reading on her phone in the dimly lit room. 

The click of his key in the door caught in her throat. All day, she had been trying to think around him, to shield herself. She worried that seeing him meant collapsing a waveform of possibilities into a single path forward. At the same time, though, she had longed for the comfort of him all day, for the warmth of his presence. She wasn’t sure which part of that felt harder to admit.

“Is it true?” he asked cautiously as he stepped in and closed the door softly behind him, their eyes locking into connection almost immediately. His face was streaked with exhaustion, even his usually bright eyes falling in the corners. He looked much like this when he came in every Friday night after driving for fifteen hours, but she felt a nervousness coming off of him that she hadn’t felt in some time now. She stood up from the couch, standing just in front of it, not sure if she should approach him or not. She barely noticed as the blanket fell in a careless pool around her feet.

She broke eye contact as she looked down and nodded. “We don’t have any kind of official tests to confirm it, but it seems the most logical explanation for quite a number of things.”

He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms in front of him, looking at her and she swore she could feel tears collecting in her eyes. Or were they his? 

“Your mother made matoke to go with the rest of the chicken if you’re hungry,” Sun said, trying to break the silence that spidered across the room, taking a few cautious steps forward.

“No,” he coughed out, swallowing whatever words might have followed and simply shaking his head, otherwise unmoving. Sun took a few more steps towards him and he pushed off the wall and wrapped her up in his arms, pulling her tightly against his chest. With the warmth of him against her, around her, with the deep breaths she could feel him take, she felt tension melting out of her. It was a feeling she couldn’t tie to anyone else.

The first of his tears dripped onto her forehead and she held him closer, her hands smoothing the curve of his back. “Shh,” she whispered. His breath dragged audibly in. As it heaved out, she pulled back to look him in the face. She reached up to wipe her face before she realized she was feeling the tear stagger slowly down his cheek as if it were hers.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m tearing up like this,” he said, laughing quietly, pulling away one hand to wipe his face. “I just don’t know what to say. It’s, there’s too much.”

“It’s okay,” said Sun, thinking that she was equally at a loss for words despite having thought about it all throughout the day.

“Are you okay?” he asked as his fingers danced lightly across her cheek as their eyes reconnected. She could feel a magnetic hunger starting to push through the exhaustion in his body, through the crushed tangle of thoughts as he looked at her, his eyes soft and wide. 

“I think so,” she said as she began to feel them pull back in towards each other. “Mostly,” she said as their faces hung closer together, a matter of centimeters separating them. The tip of his tongue darted bright through his lips, pulling the lower lip in as his hand slid around behind her head, the other snaking further around her waist to pull her in closer to him. She could feel, almost hear, the slight syncopation between the rhythm of his heartbeat with the rhythm of hers, slowly gaining momentum, gravity as their bodies pulled together.

Their bodies spoke where words had failed them. She urged him backwards towards the couch as they kissed with a frantic inelegance, her fingers already unbuttoning his shirt in what little room she could find between their chests. His hands searched for whatever skin he could find, sliding under her clothing in every direction as they stumbled together across the floor.

She pushed him back against the couch with such force that it skittered backward the short distance across the tile to the wall and his head whipped back as he landed with a grunt. She quickly climbed up after him, her knees straddling him where he sat, leaning forward against him as they kissed, his hands pressing her against him from where they had slipped in under the back of her shorts.

One of his hands slipped up to drag the drab ribbed undershirt of his that she wore up over her back, but her split attention only bothered to free one arm long enough to slip it from the shirt, leaving it hanging across part of her chest. 

She sat back on his knees to rapidly undo the last few buttons on his shirt before pulling the edge of his undershirt from the waist of his trousers, fumbling blindly at his belt at the same time. She moved as if uncovering the rich umber of his skin would reveal some kind of definitive truth she’d been searching for all day and grew angry as the couch fought her on it, grabbing the fabric from her grasp.

“Hold onto me,” he whispered. She wasn’t sure if he was reading the frustration in her thoughts or just her movement as she wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs clinging to his side as he pushed himself up just enough to slide off the couch and onto the blanket that lay crumpled where it had fallen on the floor. He reached back to slide his undershirt over his head, pulling away from her just long enough to get it all the way off. As she leaned down to bite at his chest, she thought that his skin was finally something she understood. It was maybe the first place all day where she had felt confident and on familiar ground. 

She felt him groan deep in his chest as her hips twisted against his, her teeth and tongue circling his tiny nipple in quickstep. As her breathing grew ragged, the pulse between her legs grew stronger as she felt him strain towards her through his clothing, her patience with it broke as her hands reached in to finish undoing his pants.

“Enough of this,” she breathed as she pushed firmly back against his shoulders, urging, almost forcing him onto his back. She shivered as his skin lay out against the cool beige tile. She peeled the clothes down from his waist as she skimmed low along his body, pushing her own shorts down as she crawled her way back up along it, falling awkwardly onto her side as she tried to kick them off with her feet.

At this, they both broke out laughing, rolling where they lay on the floor, awkwardly half-naked in their hurried attempts to undress enough to connect: both with pants around ankles, she with her shirt only half-off. She took a moment to shuck the last garments getting in her way. Their arms twined around each other as they pulled together, lying next to each other on the floor. As she held him against her, burying her face in his neck and breathing in his scent for a moment, she was sure it must be relief welling up in her eyes. He wiped the skin under her eye with his thumb, then began stroking the curve of her jawline gently as he rested on his other arm.

He yawned, belying his exhaustion. 

“Excuse me,” he apologized quickly.

“I am not done with you,” she said emphatically, reaching in and running her hand along the length of him. As his eyes fluttered backwards, her face bloomed into a satisfied smirk.

“Can you wait long enough to actually get into bed?” he asked and she sighed, her forehead collapsing against his chest as she laughed again, the weight of the day melting from her just a little bit more.

“Fine,” she said, looking up into his eyes and then leaning in to kiss him, softly at first, pausing to look up into his eyes, then more forcefully as her body crept on top of his, regardless of his suggestion of bed. She grabbed his wrists gently, pulling them up above his head and holding them against the floor as she rocked her hips against him in a long, slow roll. 

“I mean, this is good, too,” he said, pulling his arms free of hers and pushing himself up to a sitting position. “But we should head into the bedroom for- Well, actually, I guess we don’t really need to worry about that right now, do we?”

“I suppose not,” she said with a little sigh at the reminder. Shifting herself onto her knees, her eyes locked into his just long enough to read approval as she pushed herself down onto him, muffling the sound that came out of his mouth with her kiss, her two hands spread out across the back of his head.

His legs crossed under her as he gained steadier balance to work his hips into her movement. Free of supporting him, his hands traced the lines of her body, one anchoring on her hip and spanning across to let his thumb work against the sensitive bud at her center. His lips danced light along her throat as they moved together. 

The electricity of their bodies twisted together as they neared the point where the sense of self melted beyond the point of recognition. Their awareness flickered between their bodies, between presence and exquisite oblivion as they peaked. Sun melted against him, forehead resting on his shoulder where they sat, the weight of his head resting against hers as his body hung loosely against hers, too, both catching their breath.

“I know you don't need me to say this and knowing you, you probably don't want me to,” he said softly from beside her ear, “but, under the circumstances I would feel like a prime asshole if I didn't at least tell you I would marry you. If that was what you wanted.”

She pulled her head up slowly from his skin, hoping he didn’t notice the way it had twisted her stomach as she looked him in the eye. 

“What are you going to do, run away from me?” She chuckled, a soft smile breaking across her face as she disentangled herself from him and stood up, offering him her hand. “You're stuck with me one way or another, regardless of anything the law says. There's no need for a piece of paper to keep you with me.”

“Alright, I won’t push the issue,” he said, taking her hand and getting up. “But I’ve said it, and I mean it, and the offer stands.” She appreciated that he was just trying to to the right thing; it would be important to a lot of women in her position. In her case, though, she was more appreciative of the way he had framed it.

“I still- I don’t quite believe it yet,” he said, as they began collecting the clothes from their small piles around the room. “I thought we were being careful.”

“We were, mostly. But you remember, close to the beginning, there were a few times,” she said and he grimaced slightly in acknowledgment. They had been accustomed to seeing each other across the connection, where conception wasn’t possible. The first few times they had slept together after her arrival, there had been a certain excitement in the need to pay attention to it, as a kind of proof that they were actually together. Not long after, enthusiasm and habit had taken over and they had realized after it was too late that they’d forgotten. “I’ve only been here for about seven weeks. It had to have been right about then.”

“Have you figured out what that means for, well, for the other end of things?” he asked as she took a moment in the bathroom, not bothering to close the door.

“Last week of April, first week of May,” she said from the toilet as he rested, a silhouette against the doorframe leading into the bedroom, just down the dark hall. “If we’re counting from when I arrived.”

He yawned again.

“I’m glad you’re not ill at least,” he said. Sun laughed dismissively under her breath.

“According to your mother and the internet, I could be in for several more weeks of the same sort of shit as this week,” she said. “At least the stomach flu gives up after a matter of days.” 

She had spent most of the evening trying to find articles about pregnancy that were written as clinically as possible. There was an overly precious enthusiasm to most “maternity” sites that made her feel uncomfortable. She’d started out on Korean sites, but quickly started looking elsewhere as she realized that she wasn’t quite ready to be inundated with images of cheery pregnant women who looked that much like herself. 

“You seem to be feeling at least a little better now. I mean, all week you haven’t been up for-”

Sun shrugged as she flushed and shut the bathroom light.

“It’s been better today,” she said, crawling onto the bed and under the light woven blanket. She had a suspicion that part of what had made the week so hard was her pushing back against the suspicion of pregnancy that had lurked where she had tried to hide it in the back of her head. 

“Do you mind if I- “ he said, sitting next to her, laying a hand across her belly.

“There’s not really anything that noticeable at the moment, but sure, I guess.” 

She felt his mind slip inside hers for a moment. His exhaustion was like a weight. As he returned to his own body, he lay against her, his cheek resting against the taut skin just under the crest of her hip, the warm sandpaper of his cheek notable against such sensitive skin.

“What are you doing?” She asked, puzzled.

“Just saying hello,” he said softly.

“Saying hello to- you know it’s not much bigger than a bean right now? It can’t hear you,” she said.

“I’m not asking it to listen to any words,” he said, “I just need it to know that I’m here. You hear that, little bean?” 

He grinned playfully and looked up at her. She rolled her eyes, but smiled nonetheless. He kissed her belly and slid up the bed next to her.

“I think I’m still trying to convince myself that anything’s there,” he said as he gathered her up close against him, the breeze through the open window curling across their still-bare skin. “I mean, not that I don’t believe you. It’s just amazing that so much can grow from what is almost nothing.”

“No, in some ways, I’m still trying to convince myself the of the same thing,” she said. “It just seems so strange. I believe it, in principle, but there’s nothing to really connect to yet. Except my new relationship with the toilet.”

He chuckled into the skin of her shoulder.

“I’m just trying to picture it,” he said.

“Do you think it will be, you know, like us?” Sun asked.

“I don't know,” he said thoughtfully and yawned again. “Excuse me. It doesn’t seem to be as simple as just who your parents are.”

“I mean, there has to be some kind of genetic component to it,” Sun said, yawning in turn, ”but, I mean, our births, at the same time- that can’t have been in our genes. It was a very long time before you or I had any idea. I suspect it will be years before we can know.”

Nestled against her, his eyes slipped shut and she felt his breathing start to deepen and even out. Any tiredness had left her, though, as her mind began to wind through all the things their special circumstances could mean for a small child. 

“Do you think it’s really safe to bring someone else, someone so helpless into this situation?” She asked, rolling away from him on the bed. “I mean, with Will and all and with my brother? It just feels like any sense of security could be pulled out from under us at any moment. Even if it’s not like us, it will have to deal with whatever we go through. Is it fair to subject such a little thing to all that?”

He was startled awake, then took a deep breath. “I had thought about that as well. You forget that my mother and I were in rough waters when my sister was born.”

“I promise you, I had not forgotten that,” Sun protested.

“You know, I think you’re getting the wrong point out of that story,” he said. “I won’t deny that it was difficult; it stressed my body, it broke my heart. I sincerely hope that I never have to go through something like that again. But the point of the story, the reason I tell it, is that we survived. For all we went through, we came out alive. All of us.”

“But your father-” Sun began.

“My father is part of a different story,” he said. “Besides, you speak about it as if it were certain, as if people were going to knock down our door to take us away in the morning. I can’t tell you for certain that it won’t happen that way, but it seems unlikely. I also can’t tell you for certain that we won’t be, I don’t know, killed by an asteroid tomorrow. Bad things happen.”

“You can’t compare those things. Have you ever seen anyone killed by an asteroid?” Sun demanded.

“Well, no, but-”

“You’ve seen Will. You feel where he should be every day,” she said. “You know what almost happened - and what did happen to Nomi. You can’t tell me that doesn’t fucking scare you.”

“Of course it scares me, but I won’t let my fear of it run my life,” he said. “I know will never gain power by sacrificing what I love. It is true that you and I will not be able to protect this little bean from everything, and that we will probably face challenges other families do not. Is it safe? No. But when is it ever really safe? You know, I love you, but you keep looking at what you have and only seeing it as what can be taken away.”

“My father, my job, my home,” she said, “All of it was taken away.”

“And still you are more than just surviving,” he said. “Listen, I’m really too tired to argue with you right now. I won’t tell you that what you have left behind you is not important. Of course it is. But do not forget about what you do have; you’re not facing this alone. It doesn't make you less strong to depend on people. In fact, it is rather the opposite. Love may not always be enough to protect us from everything, but it goes a long way. ”

He rolled himself over to mold his body alongside hers.

“Besides, like you said earlier, you’re stuck with us,” he mumbled as she felt his awareness slip away from her into the slow, even breath of sleep. Her mind still not pulled towards sleep, Sun looked up to see the moon just past half full, through the spiderweb in the corner of the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love means never having to ~~say you're sorry~~ close the bathroom door when you pee.


	18. Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m sorry. It’s never as simple as people make it seem,” Capheus said with a snort, scraping the smooth brown porridge out into a bowl. “If I could trade situations with you,” he began and then stopped, smiling quietly to himself, “actually I probably wouldn’t.”

The first rusty streaks of sunrise were just starting to push past the horizon when Capheus grabbed at his alarm and turned it off. He looked over next to him to where Sun lay still on her side, the softness of sleep still holding her face, and smiled.

She usually woke with his alarm as well, but not today. He had felt her restless movement on and off throughout the night and it comforted him to see her finally resting, to see the slow, even rise and fall of her breath. He raised his hand to stroke her face but held back, thinking it better not to risk waking her right now.

He sat up, pushing the light cotton blanket back towards her as his feet touched down on the cool tile of the floor. His body still felt heavy with sleep and the muscles in his legs and back complained tightly as he stood up and stretched his arms high and wide above his head. As the cool morning air tickled his bare skin, he started looking for shorts. And then he remembered.

His stomach traced the fine line between panic and excitement as he turned back to look at Sun. A thread of guilt twisted together with it as he wished it had been his first thought. He’d spent most of yesterday in the awkward discomfort of uncertainty. The idea of it had been a nagging thought in the back of his head all day that he could neither substantiate nor dismiss, like a vivid dream one half-expects to play out just around every corner, just out of sight. But she had acknowledged it, cautiously, when he got home, too exhausted to think in any kind of straight line.

He slipped his clothes on quietly, skipping the push ups he usually did right after waking up. He stared back at Sun as he finished buttoning up his shirt. He closed the door softly behind him as he left the room.

The apartment was quiet, but for the birds outside beginning their terse, early morning negotiations. Some mornings, his mother was awake before him, already clinking around in the kitchen by the time he got up, but today didn’t seem to be one of those. Instead, her door was still closed. He didn’t want to risk waking her either. 

He wondered if she knew yet. A family was something she had always wished for him. Her words rang in his ear.

“When will it ever be just the right time?” She would say to him as she pushed him to go out, dropping her unsubtle hints about how he should meet a nice girl and build a life.

He flicked on the light in the kitchen and started heating up two pots, one with water for porridge, one with equal parts milk and water for tea. 

“Good morning,” Lito said as Capheus looked up from lighting the range to see him standing by the stove with a tiny moka pot, “Or, are you waking up or going to bed?”

“Waking up. This is when I usually get up for work,” Capheus said as he saw Lito peeking out the window over the sink. “And you? Waking up or going to bed?”

“Also waking up,” Lito said, turning back, looking puzzledly at the little coffee pot in his hand, finally setting it down next to Capheus’s pans on the stove. “Though it’s not quite so early here. It doesn’t frequently work with my schedule, but I really love early mornings now and again. There’s such a freshness to this time of day.”

“Spoken like someone who doesn’t have to get up early for work,” Capheus said.

“I suppose that’s true,” Lito shrugged with a little grin.

“I like it too, though. I’ve never been all that great at sleeping in. If you believe my mother, even when I was a little baby, I wasn’t fond of sleeping. She says it was like I was always afraid that I would miss something if I fell asleep.”

“Of course,” Lito began.

“I mean, it’s probably true,” Capheus interrupted, a grin creeping across his face. “And if it isn’t, it’s too good of a little story to stop telling.”

Lito cackled in delight as Capheus got out the two different bags of grain he mixed together for porridge and scooped a few spoonfuls of each into the mug he had used to measure out milk and water into the pans. He poured in a little water and grabbed a spoon to start mixing it into a paste.

“Is everyone else still asleep there?” Capheus asked and Lito nodded.

“Last chance to sleep in here, so of course my body decides today is a good day to wake up early,” Lito said. “Like I said, I don’t actually mind that much. But I wouldn’t dare steal anyone else’s sleep today.”

“Sounds like we’re drinking from the same cup today,” Capheus said, scooping tea leaves into the pan of milk and water and turning off its heat. “Usually we’re all up already at this time here, but I don’t know, yesterday seemed to be tiring for everyone.”

“So I understand,” Lito said, adding uncertainly, “Congratulations?”

“Thanks, I suppose,” Capheus said, “I’m still getting used to the idea. It’s so very sudden and, I guess, the easiest way to describe it is that it doesn’t feel real yet. I know it’s big, but - I guess, I just wish there was something useful I could do.”

“Something tells me there will be plenty to do before you know it,” Lito said. “So hold onto that. Are you getting married?”

“You don’t know Sun very well, do you?” Capheus asked and Lito shrugged.

“I mean, I offered, because it’s the right thing to do,” Capheus said, almost apologetically, scraping the ruddy-brown flour paste into the boiling porridge water and stirring briskly.

“And?”

“She didn’t hit me or laugh at me, so it went slightly better than I expected,” he said, pausing and narrowing his eyes as he replayed it. “No, wait, actually she did laugh. Not in a mean way, though. Actually, it was the first time I saw her smile for real in days, so maybe it was fine. Maybe it was the joke she needed.”

“Women, eh?” Lito said with a playful grin smeared across his face.

“You are so full of shit, you know that?” Capheus said, laughing as he said it.

“When have I ever claimed to be anything else?” said Lito and Capheus shrugged, still chuckling. As he looked up from the porridge, he noticed that the kitchen had opened into a bright, open, airy space with a breeze gliding gently through the open window, the pale blue curtains billowing softly. 

“Do you ever think about having kids?” Capheus asked. His pot of porridge continued to bubble on the stove here, even though it didn’t appear to be over a flame. He set the spoon aside as Lito got a mug out for his coffee.

“I do,” Lito said, stirring a little sugar into his coffee, “Though not always by choice. My mother, she still wants to know when I’m going to settle down with a nice girl and give her grandchildren. It’s all part of a single story for her.” He chuckled sadly, taking a sip of his coffee. “She would be thrilled if I were in your position. I mean, she’d have to pretend to be upset that we weren’t married yet, but it would just be for show.”

“But what do you think?”

“I guess, I always imagined having kids,” Lito said. He took another sip of coffee and rolled it around his mouth as he thought, finally setting down his coffee on the counter in Capheus’s kitchen and leaning back against the sink. “It just seemed like it was part of being an adult. When I was little, I used to make up little plays at home. And, not in all of them, but in many of them, I would play a father who had to fight through all kinds of obstacles to get home to his children. Sometimes I had to climb a mountain, sometimes I had to fight a monster, sometimes I was a fighter pilot and had to fly dogfight missions to get home.”

Their eyes met and they both giggled as they remembered the unsteady feeling of balancing on the carved wooden arm of the sofa wearing swim goggles with a towel tied around his neck as a cape, waiting to leap onto a friend dressed as a monster in a luchador mask and some kind of fur stole they had found in his mother’s closet.

“I don’t know how much that was about wanting my own father to come home, wanting to explain why he wasn’t there - what could be keeping him away, or how much it was about my own dreams for the future, of doing better than him.”

“I don’t know that it has to be just one of those things,” Capheus said.

“I suppose that’s true,” Lito said thoughtfully.

“I don’t want to be rude asking this, but what options do you have for having kids? Since you can’t, you know,” 

“Well, I mean, for better or worse it will never be a surprise for us,” Lito said.

“Even after this week?”

Lito froze for a moment as if he hadn't even considered the possibility.

“Well, I mean, I suppose, but we were very careful. It would take something of a small miracle under the circumstances,” Lito said, as if to reassure himself of how small the probability had to be, unaccustomed to it being any greater than zero.

“Well,” Capheus said, dropping the rest of the words and shrugging.

“From what I understand it didn't take that much of a miracle in your case,” Lito jumped in defensively. His mouth curled into a playful smile. “Not to say, of course, that your miracle is so small.”

Capheus rolled his eyes and laughed as he felt the blood rush hot to his cheeks, to the tips of his ears.

“To answer your question in seriousness, though, at this point there is nothing in the law to prevent us from adopting a child - there was actually a big court case about it that was decided just a few weeks ago - but I suspect it would be very difficult, still. Most of the adoption agencies in Mexico are run by the church and, well," Lito shook his head with a light, sad sigh. “There’s nothing in the law that says that they have to let us adopt and I can’t say they’d be particularly sympathetic. We’d probably have to ask a woman friend to help us make our own and that’s - that’s a lot to ask.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“But we’re not at that point, yet. I’m still in the process of winning Hernando’s trust back right now,” Lito said, offering a single quiet, sad laugh into his cup. “I also got laughed at when I asked him to marry me a little while back. In our case, we need to be willing to make the commitment before we can begin to think about children. Unlike some people I know.”

“I’m sorry. It’s never as simple as people make it seem,” Capheus said with a snort, scraping the smooth brown porridge out into a bowl. “If I could trade situations with you,” he began and then stopped, smiling quietly to himself, “actually I probably wouldn’t.”

“Almost looks like a thicker atole with chocolate,” Lito said as Capheus stirred a little honey and cinnamon into the porridge.

“No chocolate there, that’s just the color of the millet flour,” Capheus said, adding a splash of milk on top. “Though, I don’t know, it might be good with chocolate. You want a bite?”

“If you don’t mind. I mean, you’re the one who’s up early for work,” Lito said. 

“It’s all going to the same place in the end,” Capheus shrugged, blowing on a spoonful as it steamed. He took a bite and held the bowl out to Lito.

As Lito blew on his own spoonful he looked thoughtfully over at Capheus, who was stirring sugar into his tea. 

“What about you?” Lito asked. “Did you always see yourself having a family?” Capheus looked over at him with the same quiet smile, finishing preparations on his tea as Lito set down the bowl of porridge. 

“I think, like you, it just always seemed like part of being an adult, so, yes, I guess I imagined myself with children,” Capheus said. “But it also always felt like it was part of a farther away future, so it’s like it felt inevitable, but never that close to me. The closest it’s gotten is when Jela started having kids, and even then, it still didn’t feel like it fully hit me.”

“Oh? Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to explain. I guess it seemed more natural for him because he always had girlfriends, ever since we were like thirteen, fourteen. He’s always been better with girls. In lots of ways.”

“Really? But, I mean, look at you - I’m surprised the girls aren’t, like, trying to tear your clothes off in the street.”

Capheus laughed into his cereal, a bashful smile creeping awkwardly across his face. 

“No, really,” Lito said, gesturing with his coffee cup.

“I honestly don’t know what to say to that,” Capheus said. “Thanks? I think?”

“But really, what made him that much more of a ladies’ man than you?”

“I mean, to begin with, I think he wanted it more. It’s not that I didn’t want to make those kinds of connections, it just wasn’t as much of a priority for me, I guess. He’s always been more outgoing than I am in general. It’s why I drive and he’s the conductor. Being around a lot of people seemed to recharge him in a way that just made me more tired. And especially after working all day, I was already so tired - I mean, I still am. You have to really want it to make it out of the house after that. He was always the one who tried to drag me out dancing or such rather than just staying home with my mother and the TV.”

“Did it work?” 

“Sometimes. But me - I’m not good with people I don’t know unless I have something that I’m doing, a clear reason to be there. I can talk with people on the bus all day because I’m driving, but you put me at a party, in a club, even with a couple drinks, I’m useless for talking up new people. Not that it’s really possible to talk much there anyway. But that’s getting away from the your original question. He was always better with girls. For lots of reasons.”

“Awkward comes in unexpected shapes, I guess,” Lito said with a shrug. “But, yes, we were talking about his kids, not his girlfriends.”

“Eleana got pregnant with Isaiah when we were 20? 21? He’s eight now, so I guess he was born when we were 20. You should have seen what a sweet little pumpkinseed Isaiah was when he was born. I could never quite put myself in Jela’s place like that, but I think it had to do as much with his reaction to it as the fact of it. He just, he got so angry. Not at her, not at anyone particular. It’s not like he got violent or anything, he was just angry in more of a general way.”

“Were they married at that point?”

“No, which I think was part of what made it such a big change for him. He kept on saying that his life was over now, and I don’t know, it seemed more like a beginning to me.”

“Beginnings and endings are not so different,” Lito said from across his coffee. 

“That’s true,” Capheus said. “But, it made it hard to connect with him, with what he was going through. You know, I couldn’t quite get a bearing on how I would feel in his place, but I knew it wouldn’t be like that.”

“I mean, anger is often part of a more complex set of emotions,” Lito said.

“Yeah, I realized that at some point, after he’d been going on for a while about all the things that made him angry, I realized that he was really more afraid. It was just easier for him to be angry than to be afraid.”

“How many times have I seen that?” Lito laughed sadly into his cup. “What about you, though?”

“Like I said, I don’t think it’s quite hit me yet. It feels kind of out of my hands, which I think is one of the things that made Jela angry,” Capheus said, scraping up the last of the porridge from the bowl. He pointed at Lito with his spoon. “That one, that one I can almost see the frustration in it.”.

“Like you were saying earlier, you just want to do something.”

“Exactly, yes.”

“I wish I had more I could tell you, but she’ll need you later,” Lito said with a shrug. “I know she doesn’t like asking for help and I can’t tell you for what, but I know she’ll be glad for having you there. If nothing else, you will be there to remind her what a beautiful woman she is when she feels like a blimp,” he said, holding his hand out in front of his stomach.

“She’s not much one for that kind of compliment. It makes her uncomfortable when I say things like that,” Capheus said.

“There are other, more important ways of telling her that without words,” Lito said, lifting an eyebrow in suggestive punctuation.

Lito giggled as Capheus shook his head and pushed past him to get to the sink to rinse out his bowl, chuckling softly nonetheless. He thought back to his conversation with Sun as they had been falling asleep as he wiped out the bowl.

“Do you think we should be worried about what it means to bring a child into the middle of all this?” Capheus asked, setting the bowl on the drainboard as he turned back. Lito sighed thoughtfully, a deep grumble crawling up the back half of it.

“That’s what she asked, isn’t it?” he said. Capheus shrugged.

“This is just the way she processes things,” he said. “She starts out trying to find the worst case scenario, everything that can possibly go wrong and then scales it back from there. But,”

“When is there ever going to be a perfect time?” Lito interrupted before Capheus could spin out the thought any further.

“You’re sounding like my mother,” Capheus said.

“Yeah, I probably sound like my mother right now, too,” Lito agreed. “But actually, this is a good example.”

“Example of what?”

“Of something you can do for her,” Lito said. “It seems like this is something you regularly do for her anyway, helping her find her way past all the traps in a room that doesn’t have any.”

“I guess that’s true. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I guess so,” Capheus said.

“You know, I think there’s just a little tiny part of me that’s jealous of you both right now,” Lito said. “A family is that thing that’s waiting on the other side of hiding who I am - who I’ve been. But it still feels like I have a lot of work to do to be worthy of that, even if there is no perfect time.”

“No, I get that. I feel like that’s a big part of what I’m feeling right now, too,”

“Jealous of yourself?” Lito asked. Capheus laughed quietly through pursed lips.

“No, just trying to be worthy of it,” he said.

“You will be,” Lito said. “And you’ll have the rest of us to back you up, regardless.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a surprising amount of research into different varieties of millet around the world that went into this chapter, because the warm brown color of the porridge I was seeing didn’t match up with the millet flour I’ve worked with, which is a kind of pale, creamy yellow. Turns out the more common millet in East Africa is the darker-colored _Eleusine coracana_ (“finger millet”), while the lighter-colored millet with which I’m more familiar is _Panicum miliaceum_ (“proso millet”). I considered just using the Swahili word _wimbi_ to describe the grain, because it is tied to that species of millet, but given the unique comprehensibility situation among sensates, I try to limit use of non-English words between sensates to untranslatable concepts or quotations.


	19. In Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you sure this was not another dream?” Capheus asked.
> 
> “I can’t imagine I would have fallen back asleep quite that fast,” Sun said. “Unless it’s been longer than I think it has.”
> 
> “No, you woke up only a few minutes ago from the first dream,” he said. “But sometimes if you are already dreaming, it’s easier to slip back into it, as if you hadn’t quite left.”
> 
> “It felt different than a dream. Than that dream at least,” she said, rubbing her face with both her hands and starting to get out of bed.

The tiny, sticky hand glistened in the minimal light shining through the bedroom window as it reached up, fingers outstretched as if grasping for something out of view. The tiny fingers flexed in the air as the hand curled gently and fell to the domed skin of Sun’s belly. Unable to move where she lay on the bed, she watched the second hand clumsily push its way out of her navel. It was followed by an almost translucent, barely distinct body, almost slug-like but for the giant protrusion of a head. The way it caught the light, it nearly glowed. The head, the tiny brain, she thought she could see it throb, almost like a beating heart. She watched it drag itself clumsily, hand over hand, down the slope of her belly, across her hip towards where Capheus lay on his side against her, asleep. As it began trying to climb in through his navel, she woke up.

As she sat up in bed, her heart fluttering nervously, her eyes searched the room. Chair, dresser, closet door: nothing appeared to be out of place. She looked down at her body, relieved to see only the very gentle, slight rise that had developed in her abdomen rather than the exaggerated slope she had seen just before. Capheus rolled towards her from where he had been asleep, reaching up to stroke her arm gently.

“More dreams?” he asked softly. Sun looked over at him and nodded.

“Bad one?”

“I saw it,” she said, laying back down facing him, letting him pull her in close to him, their legs lacing together, “It was trying to crawl out of me and into you? I think?” In the warmth radiating from him, she could feel her body begin to relax, slackening into him as her heart settled back to a baseline. 

“Maybe our restless bean here already wants to explore the world,” Capheus said warmly.

“That’s a very generous reading,” she said, still not quite able to get the image out of her head, the uncanny texture of it, the way it glistened sitting heavy with her. “I could see through to its brain, its heart.”

“Sounds like those pictures you were looking at earlier tonight of what it looks like now, at 14 weeks” he said. “You know, all kangaroos are born tiny like that,” he said. “After only four weeks, if I remember correctly. Though, I don’t think you can see inside them quite that way. I remember seeing something about it in a nature documentary - this tiny, squirming fruit drop of a thing has to climb all the way up into its mother’s pouch where it will do most of its growing.”

“Hm,” Sun grunted thoughtfully. “I knew about the pouch, but I didn’t realize they were quite that small.”

“It’s pretty amazing,” he said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sounds somewhat nerve-wracking for the mother kangaroo.”

“I suppose it’s all a matter of what you’re used to,” he said. “Human babies are born far more helpless than a lot of other animals. If you think about a dog or a chicken, their babies can walk just about as soon as they get over the shock of being on the outside. We’ve got round about a year before that. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Us and mama kangaroo - at least we know where our babies are.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Sun said. Her mouth twisted up slightly. “Though do we ever quite get over the shock of being on the outside?”

Capheus laughed through an exasperated sigh. “Fair point,” he said and gave her a quick peck of a kiss. “Is that helping?”

“With what?” Sun said, perplexed.

“Nightmares. Shock of being in the world,” he said and kissed her again. “Take your pick.”

“Mm, not sure,” she said. “Might need to try again.”

He kissed her again, leading in more gently, his hand caressing her face as his lips met hers, the soft tip of his tongue probing delicately along the tender edge of her lips, into her mouth. Even as she let herself sink into the comfort of him, a pinprick of worry still ached in a corner of her brain. It was the same strange sense of being watched that seemed to accompany all of the odd, vivid dreams she’d begun having in the last several weeks. The dreams were sometimes more bizarre than explicitly terrifying. For every dream that involved intensely bright lights and unidentifiable people swathed in surgical green and white, there was another where she was in the ocean and had colorful fish swimming up just to brush affectionately against her. Sometimes she had woken in the middle of the night with no conscious memory of the dream, just that eerie feeling of being watched by someone who remained just out of view. It was almost like a word, a name nearly remembered on the tip of the tongue.

As the thought gained purchase elsewhere in her mind, she pulled herself back out from his kiss and wiggled onto her other side, facing away from him towards the window.

“Are you okay?” he asked worriedly. “Do you want a little more space?” He started pulling his hand back from her but she reached down to weave their fingers together and rest on the bare skin of her belly. 

“No, it’s actually quite comforting to have you here right now, but I think I’d better just try to get back to sleep,” she said, not wanting to dig into the recurrent fragment of her dreams that she couldn’t shake. He kissed the nape of her neck lightly. She could tell he knew there was more going on there, but he also knew not to press the issue. Nothing he or anyone else could say would completely remove the intrusion of that thought. The warmth of him against her back, his hand wide open against her stomach; that offered about as much of a sense of security as she was going to find right now. 

As Sun’s eyes turned back and settled on the window, she could swear she saw the reflection of someone else standing silently in the room, a dark-skinned woman in a white button down shirt, arms crossed in front of her. An icy tightness sliced through her, the feeling of someone flipping through her mind like an old library card catalog. Her head whipped around as she sat up. As she turned, she thought she saw a flash of white fabric out of the corner of her eye but saw no one.

“What is it?” Capheus asked worriedly as he sat up beside her, his eyes shifting from her around the room as he absorbed her reaction.

“I thought I saw someone in the room,” Sun said, a confused chill still circulating through her.

“Someone you wouldn’t expect?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think,” Sun said, still looking around, “I’m almost certain it’s a face I’ve seen before, though. I feel like I know her.”

She closed her eyes and tried to piece together as much of what she had seen in the window as she could. She could feel Capheus puzzling through it with her as her own memory was reflected back to her. The reflection in the dark room could only capture so much, but the image in her mind was clear: the deep copper skin of her round face, long, smooth black hair tied back, the sternness of her eyes. Crisp white shirt rolled up to the elbows. She looked to be Indian, but it certainly hadn’t been Kala. She saw a number of Indian women on any given day in Nairobi, but knew only a handful reliably by face or by name. The face didn’t seem to line up with any of them, either. The unplaceable familiarity of the face grated on her.

“Are you sure this was not another dream?” he asked.

“I can’t imagine I would have fallen back asleep quite that fast,” she said. “Unless it’s been longer than I think it has.”

“No, you woke up only a few minutes ago from the first dream,” he said. “But sometimes if you are already dreaming, it’s easier to slip back into it, as if you hadn’t quite left.”

“It felt different than a dream. Than that dream at least,” she said, rubbing her face with both her hands and starting to get out of bed.

“Bathroom?” Capheus asked playfully.

“No, getting a drink of water, but then, probably yes,” Sun said, slightly grumpy about how predictably frequent her bathroom visits had become. In truth, she hoped getting up would clear her mind, help her let go and actually rest again.

She padded quietly into the kitchen without bothering to turn on a light, the cool white of the floodlight outside the building bleeding in just enough to see, casting the oddly-angled, low-contrast shadows that only existed in the middle of the night. She filled a glass with water and took a long sip. The image of the woman reflected in the window hung in her mind, her sternly intent look, her arms crossed almost as if challenging Sun to recognize her. 

She wasn’t sure whether the clarity of the image in her memory made her more or less sure it had been a dream. The memory of dreams sometimes had a hyperfocus of detail on a single element like that, even if no other part of it had even as much coherency as a loose fog. The image of the slimy, glowing grub baby had been presciently clear in the same way when she had woken up. She could still picture it down to the dark dots of eyes yet unable to blink. That had certainly been a dream. What she had seen in the window must have been a dream as well. 

Unless she hadn’t seen clearly - a distortion in the glass, perhaps - and it had been Kala. She was the only cluster member it could have been, though Kala’s name hadn’t even crossed her mind when she had first seen the reflection. Sun wasn’t sure what would have called her to them in the middle of the night, but it wasn’t always possible to trace such reasons. The cluster had strengthened their ability to generate connections by softy focusing their thoughts, learning to balance clarity and openness in their minds. Even so, spontaneous connections, often oblique in their origin, still represented the majority of their visits. It was easier to develop good etiquette and a good attitude around the situation than to control it. Though, for just this reason, it wouldn’t be like Kala to disappear when seen, as if to avoid notice that she had been there. She wasn’t sure what time it was here, but whatever time it was, it wasn’t so much later in Mumbai. It had to be too early still for Kala to be dressed in work clothes. 

Sun finished her water and rinsed the glass, setting it to dry by the sink, and walked out for the bathroom, her shadow following long behind.

As she sat on the toilet, the face in the window finally clicked into context. Kabaka’s house, a little over a month ago. Six weeks, since it had been just before she realized she was pregnant. The business associate of his visiting from Mumbai and that awkward conversation on the patio. Agarwal, her name had been. She relaxed slightly as the details fell into place next to each other, feeling like she was exhaling fully for the first time since she had woken up. 

She headed back to the bedroom and found Capheus still awake, resting with his hands behind his head, looking out the window. He turned to her as she walked in, though, and she could feel him smile as she stepped into the light coming through the window.

“I think you’re right, I must have fallen back asleep right then and dreamed the face in the window,” she said, climbing onto the end of the bed and crawling down towards him. “I figured out who it was that I saw, though. I’m almost certain it was the Indian woman who was visiting Kabaka about six weeks ago, Agarwal.”

“That seems fairly random,” he said.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to read into that, but dream logic can be quite strange,” Sun said, a twinge of annoyance in her voice as she climbed back under the blanket. “Did you actually meet her while she was here?”

“No, not personally,” he said, pulling her in against him as she settled herself. “Apparently, she wanted to meet me or Kabaka wanted her to meet me, I’m not sure which, but we never actually crossed paths while she was here.”

“She’s a very intense type,” Sun said. “All business, but not in quite the same way he is. She seems harder to read, but maybe I just know him better.”

“Well, maybe that’s it,” he said. “Maybe she turned up in your dream as some symbol of,” he paused, struggling to pull together precise words, “something you can’t just see into?”

“On a window?” she said incredulously. “Something you can’t see through on something you can?” She sighed. “Why can’t I just keep having the dream where fish want me to pet them?”

“Maybe we’re overthinking this,” he said. “It doesn’t have to mean anything in particular. It’s just your mind wandering. It doesn’t mean it has to be going anywhere in particular. If there’s some kind of useful story to tell in it, fine, take it, take what you need from it. But there’s no sense tearing your brain apart over a random memory if there isn’t.”

“I suppose that’s true,” she conceded, still trying to turn it around in her mind to see it from every view. Capheus chuckled softly.

“I also know that there’s nothing I can say to make you drop it,” he said knowingly and she grinned softly at him in the dim light. “But your persistence is one of the things I love most about you, so I’ll stop giving you a hard time about it.”

“You’re sweet,” she said and pulled their interlocked hands up to kiss his.

“I know,” he said playfully and Sun let out an exasperated sigh.

“I take it back,” she said wryly.

“No, you don’t,” he said.

“Fine,” she said, “You’re right, I don’t.” She let herself settle into the warm silence between them. The image of Agrawal’s face reflected on the window still hung in her thoughts, her stern face challenging her to find meaning in it the way it seemed to have challenged her to recognize it earlier. Sleep pulled at her.

She was in a silent, well-lit, beige room, empty but for a simple metal table at its center, holding a white mug of milky tea and what looked to be a well-used legal pad, a pen sitting open on top of it. A single padded chair was pushed out from the table, a charcoal blazer hanging over the back of it. Sun felt a disconcerting sense of familiarity, as if she had seen this room before. She leaned over to look at what was written. The letters were familiar, not far from Kala’s handwritten Devanagari. As Sun looked at it, she realized that she could read it and found herself reading through notes about herself and Capheus, about her pregnancy, about the dreams she’d been having that they had just discussed. With a sick feeling in her stomach, Sun noted that there were several pages flipped over the back of the legal pad.

Sun reached to pick it up. As her hands clasped around it, she heard the click of heels behind her and quickly turned to see Jaya Agarwal standing there, behind where she’d just been standing. Agarwal looked like she was preparing to say something, but before she could, Sun dropped the pad and landed a quick combination of punches and kicks that left Agarwal reeling limply towards the floor.

Before she saw her hit the ground, Sun sat up in her bed yet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suspect this isn’t what you’re thinking about at this point, but here’s something neat I read about while prepping for this section.
> 
> I don’t know precisely how much credence to put in this etymology, particularly without glosses, but one of the resources I’ve been reading about Nandi language and culture included the following in its description of the role/significance of dreams: “The Nandi word for dream is _karuotitoiet_ , derived from the verb _ru_ = sleep, through the following stages: _i-ru-oti_ =’sleep all over the place’; _i-ru-oti-te_ = ‘sleep about hither and thither’; _ka-’ru-oti-toi-o_ = dream. The etymological implication is a concept of aimless motion in sleep.”
> 
> (Nandi/Kalenjin is the background I decided Capheus shares with his mother, though the text of the show doesn’t offer much of anything conclusive as far as his mother’s background, only that they’re not big fans of his father’s people, the Luo (also Kabaka’s, based on name research). They could have just as easily been Kikuyu.) 
> 
> I can’t say for certain if Capheus (or Sun - she speaks this language, too) would necessarily parse it that way, nor do I attribute that much importance to Whorfian ideas of the way language profoundly and subconsciously influences perception and thought. That said, I think that it’s possible for the connotations in the structure of words to be interesting conscious reflection points for what they denote. Anyway, I was thinking about that etymology a lot while writing this chapter.
> 
> Okay, I’ll shut up now, but here’s a Magnetic Fields song about a notable linguist I felt compelled to add.  
> [The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAkYGV2Ymdc)


	20. A Few Earnest Moths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How long is it going to be before you can just knock me out like Will?” Sun asked as she looked tiredly into Kala’s eyes. Kala’s face fell into her own lap, her fingers knotting together with thought. The rest of the room fell silent.
> 
> “I don’t know that we can,” Kala said quietly, shrugging through tangled fingers as she looked back up at Sun.

“So you’re telling me none of this turned up when we were first looking at her and her company?” Lito asked, throwing his hands up with a frustrated disbelief as he paced what space was available in the small, crowded bedroom.

“No, the closest thing we could find to a connection between Agarwal’s company and BPO was a few researchers who’ve turned up on studies funded by each or both of them,” Nomi said, shrugging through crossed arms from where she leaned against the dresser.

“Both of them? And that wasn’t cause for concern?” Wolfgang asked from his place leaning against the wall.

Sun sat in the corner of the disheveled bed, massaging her fingers as the cacophony of voices swirled around her. Her eyes followed the conversation quietly around the room, but she only half-followed what was being said as she tried to shut out the image of Riley stroking Will’s face as he began slipping into unconsciousness once again. In her image of it, she became the one looking up through gauzy vision as Riley leaned in to kiss her to sleep with the gentleness of a mournful longing that, nonetheless, tasted like sweetness on her lips. Her own room became the veil on her eyes as she hung in between, slipping back as Will released himself to sleep again, away from the risk of Whispers’ mental prying. 

“No, actually, that’s not evidence of much,” Kala explained from her seat on the bed, reaching down and squeezing Sun’s bare foot affectionately without breaking the flow of her words. The gentle pressure of Kala’s soft, precise fingers reanchored her awareness in her own body in Nairobi. 

“Even BPO has to have a legitimate arm to justify whatever else they’re doing,” Nomi said. “In this case, I don’t know that you could really even call it just a cover. It’s just the,” she laughed tiredly, “well, the less explicitly evil wing of the company.”

“Sometimes, you have to take the research funding you can get,” shrugged Kala, “It was cause for enough concern to look more closely at the papers released about those studies, but they didn’t have to do with anything that bore enough resemblance to our situation to raise further concern or merit deeper investigation at the time.”

“For that matter, we don’t actually know that her company is involved with any of this, or if they even know anything specific about us,” said Nomi. “Besides, Agarwal’s not directly involved in research. She’s on the company’s legal staff. How the fuck were we supposed to have any indication she was a sensate?”

“So what do we know?” Wolfgang asked with a sardonic distance. Nevertheless, Sun felt the burden of several pairs of eyes as they settled on her expectantly.

“What are you looking at me for? Just because I can get at her thoughts doesn’t mean I can just look it up in her brain like it’s Google. You know how it works,” she said, drawing on her long-practiced skill in holding her face calm and neutral when all she wanted to do was put her fist through something. She searched for somewhere else to focus her eyes and realized as she looked down that her hands had clenched into loose fists as she had been massaging them.

Sun let out a frustrated sigh as her eyes slipped shut so she could concentrate as the room hushed around her, hoping quietly for a glimpse of her memory. She tried to focus on what memories she had that connected clearly to Agarwal’s. There wasn’t much at this point.

_The sharp, hawkish look she’d had when shaking Sun’s hand upon their first meeting in Kabaka’s foyer; the dark-streaked ironwood intensity of her eyes._

“I don’t think she came to Kenya to find sensates, either generally or specifically. At least, she was genuinely surprised to find someone like me,” Sun reported, her eyes still closed. “She definitely knows about you,” she said, her eyes opening to look back at Capheus apologetically. “But she didn’t until she met me.”

_The thin, processed air of the tiny, sterile room; the crisp yellow leaves of the legal pad; the scrawled black ballpoint writing, most of which kept trying to slip into Korean in her memory as the substance of it surfaced in the language most familiar to her; the uncanny, distant oddness of recognizing her own name like a glyph in the half-familiar script._

“I don’t think the notes are for work. My sense is that they’re not digitized in any way and the writing,” Sun trailed off, unable to put into words what felt off about they way they’d been written.

“She’s writing in Punjabi,” Kala said with mild surprise as Sun held that last image in her mind as best she could. “ _Suraja._ That’s the word for _sun_ , not a phonetic spelling of your name.”

“Wait, how did I see my name in that, then?” she said, trying to sift through a cloud of words and images. Something about the way her name was written had seemed off when she looked at it, but she had assumed it was just that she’d never seen it in that kind of writing. She had never entirely gotten used to seeing her name in Latin characters, either, though her distance there was somewhat more cultivated. She remembered herself embarrassed, trying to disappear into her seat in her third grade English class. The picture of the smiling cartoon sun in her textbook that seemed to grow more and more disgustingly smug each time she looked at it. The way a hushed giggle had tagged its way through her classmates each and every time the teacher had said her name but had been referring to that idiotic picture.

“Who’s to second-guess thinking in that many languages at once?” Lito said with a wave of his hand.

“I think you’re right, though. If it were for work it would almost certainly be in English or Hindi,” Kala shook her head as she took over explaining. “Even if she were working in Punjab, that would probably be the case, but her office is in Mumbai. There are still plenty of Punjabi speakers here, but it seems to suggest she’s trying to limit the number of people who can read it.”

“She knows your name,” Capheus said. He spoke quietly, but the room fell silent around him. “Your real name. You never told it to her. You introduced yourself to her as Susan, did you not?”

“No, you’re right, I did,” Sun said as his meaning started to dawn on her. 

_She knows my name._ Sun’s mind wove through the details of her legal case. 

“Why is she just sitting on this, though?” Lito asked. “It’s been six weeks, you said, since you saw her. Will’s had to resist capture from the first minute he was burned and she’s just been letting you go about your everyday life. I don’t get it.”

“Yes, and she’s been watching her go about her everyday life to some unknown degree for six weeks, too,” Nomi said. “Surveillance works best when you’re watching someone who doesn’t know they’re being watched. She’s probably gotten way more information out of this approach than Captain Stompybeard has pulled out of Will’s memory in double that time.”

Sun rubbed her forehead in frustration, hand shielding her eyes as if trying to hide from the facts of the situation, from the danger she had put the people closest to her in. Agarwal and whoever else she was working with could probably track down any of them at this point, walk in and take them at any time. She had more or less gotten used to the feeling that her memories were not just her own, that her thoughts were not private. However uncertain things had been since then, that had never been what had felt unsafe. Frustrating, at times, but not dangerous.

She remembered the feeling of consciousness slipping away that she had felt with Will and longed to follow him over that edge. That feeling - like she was dissolving into the bedclothes - it had terrified her at first, the loss of awareness like a loss of self, a loss of safety. For so long her sense of security had been tied up in her keen awareness of her environment, her sharp reflexes, that any dulling of that edge felt like a liability. Right now, though, the opposite seemed plain. _Milk of amnesia,_ Kala had called it, jokingly, while adjusting Will’s IV drip. At this point that sounded like it might be the pure milk of the earth. The voices around her hummed, but she didn’t make out what they were saying.

“Sun? Sun?” Kala squeezed her ankle again as she called her name. Sun’s head snapped up towards her, her eyes refocusing as they met the bright warmth of Kala’s. 

“How long is it going to be before you can just knock me out like Will?” Sun asked as she looked tiredly into Kala’s eyes. Kala’s face fell into her own lap, her fingers knotting together with thought. The rest of the room fell silent.

“I don’t know that we can,” Kala said quietly, shrugging through tangled fingers as she looked back up at Sun.

“What do you mean?” Sun said. “But how else are we going to keep her from watching us, from digging up whatever information she can?”

“I don’t know,” Kala said, shaking her head, “But it’s not as simple to just sedate you indefinitely like that, not now, with, you know.”

Sun looked down into her lap again, at the gentle rise of her belly. It wasn’t enough yet that anyone who wasn’t seeing her bare skin or looking for it would notice, but she’d come to find it hard to ignore. She chewed the inside of her lip as she fought back the wet heat that was beginning to itch at her eyes.

“Wait, so we’re just going to let this channel stay open like this?” Nomi asked, her shock open. 

“That’s not your call to make. This is about a choice only Sun could make and which she made some time ago,” said Wolfgang forcefully. “When she made that choice, this stopped being just some thing and became our family. If we can’t make that a priority, I don’t even know what the fucking point of all this is.”

“No, you’re right. You’re totally right. I’m sorry,” Nomi said, her face twisted apologetically. She turned to Sun, “I’m sorry, Sun. I wasn’t thinking.”

“I mean, I’ll look into what I can do, but it’s more complicated to find any kind of medication for a pregnant woman, much less something for that kind of long-term sedation,” Kala said, reaching out to take Sun’s hand in hers. She didn’t try to follow when Sun moved her hand away, shifting to lean her weight back on her hands. “I believe the propofol we’ve been giving Will would be safe for a brief period of time in an emergency. It might actually the best choice, in fact. But I don’t think there’s enough information to just sign off on it indefinitely in the same way.”

Sun looked down at the windowsill and sniffed back the tears that she held behind her face, unwilling to let that go in front of everyone. She didn’t think she was fooling anyone, but the sense that she still had control over whether she let them fall or not seemed important right in that moment.

The room fell into a lull. Even the insects outside that often sang her to sleep with their whirring hum were quiet at this hour. A few earnest moths still wheeled around the light in front of the building. Sun tried to line up the jagged pieces of the situation, but none of it pieced together into something she could do, only what she could ask of others while she was waiting. 

Waiting. Waiting had never been her strong suit. Except in the ring, ironically. She had often been content to let her opponents tire themselves out while she blocked and wove around them before attacking directly into their exhaustion and complacency. She always had some idea of where the payoff of that would be, though, and her patience there was not particularly passive. It was gratification delayed, perhaps, but instead of the endpoint being out of view it was simply coming into focus.

Sun was struck with the image of Agarwal suited up across a dimly-lit boxing ring. She was surprised at how easy it was to picture: her smoothly coiffed business tie-back seemed to fit just as well as a boxing hairstyle, her hands securely wrapped. The menacing intensity of her stare fit as well in the ring as it would in a boardroom, maybe better. If only this were as simple as a boxing match. 

When she had embraced the idea of having this baby, she had promised herself to stop letting other people define the way she made decisions, either as an action or as a reaction. That thought had been easy when it was about her brother, about the board of her family’s company. About people who just held up their expectations and offered little to nothing in return. She had felt powerful in consciously releasing herself from their perspectives and opinions. Looking around the room, though, the thought fell into focus in her head: there is no such thing as alone. There was no decision she could make that wouldn’t affect them. She felt embarrassed at the degree to which that felt like new information, after living the reality of it for as long as they had already.

What Wolfgang had said not long ago ran through her head again: _If we can’t make that a priority, I don’t even know what the fucking point of all this is._ The force of his words had shocked her initially, especially given his own stated antipathy towards breeding, though that only seemed to extend as far as himself. The concatenation of circumstances and choices lined up behind her compromised the safety of her cluster, of the people closest to her. There was no way of avoiding the truth of that. When they looked at her, though, when they _saw_ her, they saw far more than a balance sheet of what she’d needed and what she’d offered. She couldn’t say what is was they did see, but apparently, it was worth compromising their sense of safety. The thought of it still didn’t sit perfectly well with her, but in it she found a new sense of energy, of engagement in what was happening.

“You know, I don’t think we can assume that this is exactly the same situation as Will’s,” Kala said. “It’s been six weeks and it seems like all she’s done is take notes.”

“So far, maybe,” said Wolfgang, “Who’s to say how her behavior might change now that she doesn’t have the benefit of secrecy? And where are those notes going? You can’t tell me she’s at work in the middle of the night just doing this as a hobby.”

“Do we know for certain she was at work?” Nomi asked.

“It certainly wasn’t at home,” Sun interjected. “It felt like a corporate building. I don’t know, I just felt like I was at work. I don’t know if I was picking it up from her or if there was something about the staleness of the air. I didn’t have much time to think about it. I can’t say that was what really had my attention right then.”

“So, what do we do?” Capheus asked. “Just keep living our lives every day like someone’s about to break down the door?”

“You mean you weren’t living like that already?” Nomi asked with a sad laugh under her breath. Nomi, who had been spoofing sightings of herself around the world for months to deflect attention away from her in her own home. It was a fair point. Sun found herself checking over her shoulder more frequently, reading crowds more carefully, though she couldn’t say if it were due more to an immediate concern about herself or to some kind of vague, residual paranoia that drifted across the connection.

“There’s just too many open questions,” Kala said.

“Then we need some more answers,” said Nomi. “I think it might be time to do a little more direct surveillance of our own.”


	21. Drunk on the Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh, shut it,” Capheus said. “You know that’s not what I mean. It’s just, it’s strange to come back here and feel like I’m not a part of it, like I don’t belong where I’m from. Which I guess would be true if I went back to my mother’s village. But I think that’s what I’m afraid of.”
> 
> “What do you mean, then?” asked Wolfgang
> 
> “Not remembering. You know, on the surface, I remember being there. I remember what it looks like, the names and faces of the people. But I don’t really remember what it was like to be there. And I don’t think that’s something I can ever get back.”

Capheus tried to tell Jela that he was leaving, but he had been avoiding him for days. Jela couldn’t entirely avoid him; they were still running the van route most days. He was waiting each morning when Capheus came to pick him up in the van, but he had an uncharacteristically quiet affect when he wasn’t talking to passengers, when it was just the two of them. As soon as passengers showed up, his acerbically playful banter blossomed as if nothing was different. But, again, at the end of the day, when Capheus tried to play casual inviting him for a beer after the route was done, he mumbled excuses about needing to be at home.

He knew. He had to. It was the only explanation for the kind of distance he’d placed between them. Capheus couldn’t say how he knew or how much, but supposed that wasn’t the important part. He wasn’t sure which part sat more uncomfortably with him: the leaving or not being able to be honest about it.

It wasn’t that he never lied to Jela - he’d fed him any number of half-truths over the two decades they’d been friends. Gracious bullshit, white lies with a grain of reality, stories spun that way for Jela’s peace of mind rather than his own. This one was crafted for his safety above his peace of mind, but there was no easy way to sell it. The only way to leave was to leave. He and Sun had talked exhausted circles around the situation, with and without his mother, with and without the others. 

In many ways, the situation would be easier if there were a clear and present danger here in Nairobi, but that was just one of the many open questions that refused to resolve itself.

It was just under a week before their flight out when Capheus left the van in park after the last passengers got off. The sound of crickets churned industriously through the still night air, a light, whistling harmony droning above it. Jela had sat himself down in the back half of the van, his body curled protectively towards the window as he waited for his ride home. Capheus looked back over his shoulder, then back to where his hands gripped the steering wheel. With a deep breath, he stood up and started making his way back towards where he sat.

Jela looked up at him after the first couple of steps, but kept his silence, his flat affect. Capheus sat down in the seat across from him, leaning his arms on his knees, staring intently at the dark grooved tread of the floor as he struggled to find a way to open this conversation. He’d played it out in many ways in his head, starting from when he imagined he could buy his friend a few beers to soften him up before broaching the issue. 

“Do you remember when we first got this bus?” Capheus asked.

“Oh, cut the shit, what do you want?” Jela snapped back at him tiredly, his eyes flashing stridently towards him. Capheus looked towards the front, focusing his eyes on the steering wheel again before turning back.

“Listen, I can tell that you’ve heard things,” he said apologetically. “I don’t know precisely what you’ve heard, but I’m sorry you heard it somewhere else first. You deserve better than that.”

Jela rolled his head back towards the window quietly again, and then turned back.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with you off jetting around the world with your little kung fu ladyfriend there?” Jela snapped at him. Capheus sighed as his head fell, rubbing his face.

“We’re not just travelling for the hell of it,” Capheus said defensively.

“No, you’re door-to-door salesmen or some shit now,” Jela spat back sarcastically.

“No, you don’t understand. There’s going to be a baby,” Capheus said, still managing to hold the calm in his voice. Jela looked at him as if he’d spoken some other language. “We- she’s having a baby. So we’re going back to her home in California.”

The response seemed to catch Jela off guard as he turned to Capheus with a puzzled look on his face before rolling his eyes and shaking his head, lips pressed together.

“And so, another one of the great ones falls,” he said, his head still shaking. Capheus started laughing, a warm laugh from somewhere deep within him that was as much relief as it was a response to the joke in what Jela had said. “I’d say so much for ever going out again, but considering that it’s you, it’s more like so much for your staying home to turn in early ever again.”

As Capheus lost himself into laughter, Jela finally laughed at his own joke, or possibly just Capheus’s reaction to it. He couldn’t tell, and, perhaps, it didn’t matter. For just a moment, it felt like old times, like nothing had changed. The tension that had gripped the air gently loosened its long fingers. It still wasn’t entirely gone, but it no longer seemed to choke the air between them the way it had seemed to in the last week or so. Their laughter fed back into each other’s such that they weren’t even sure what they were laughing about anymore.

“I just can’t believe you’re moving that far away,” Jela said as he recovered his cool.

“Truthfully, I can’t really either,” Capheus said, still speaking through the last of a deep-set laugh. “You sure I can’t buy you a beer or two?”

“It’s the fucking least you can do,” Jela said with a certain performative exasperation in his voice and Capheus tried to fight the smile he felt hearing Jela talk to him like himself for the first time all week.

They still rode quietly as the van bumped down the short distance to where he usually dropped Jela off, closer to his house. The two of them climbed down out of the van, Capheus locking it behind them as they walked through the cool stillness of the evening towards Kavu’s, the bar closest to where Jela lived. Not far from where Capheus used to live. He jammed his hands in his pants pockets, Jela still holding on to an uncharacteristic quiet as they walked. 

Coming back to his old neighborhood was something of an odd experience, though part of that oddness was in how little had changed in what was around him. It was strangely akin to being in the homes of the others in his cluster, a contrast of deep familiarity with the nagging feeling that it didn’t quite belong to you, no matter how well you could find everything in the dark. 

Mama Wilfred behind the bar still recognized him, though. It would be a shock if she didn’t, given the number of after work pints the two of them had stopped in for, especially after they’d started running the van about five years ago. She’d been here for as long as he could remember. Her son, Wilfred, was Capheus and Jela’s age, and had been in school with them. 

“What you doing back here, Ruaka boy? Aren’t you a little far from your neighborhood?” she volleyed at him playfully. She was about his mother’s age, though a little more generously built.

“What are you talking about? This is my home, this chair, right here,” Capheus said with a playful grin, pulling out a gray plastic chair and sitting down at an empty table. The room, dimly lit by strings of twinkle lights running around the perimeter and a couple of clip lamps, was fairly quiet, save a quiet radio in the corner crackling out some kind of benga beat he couldn’t hear well enough to recognize. Not any more quiet than one would expect on a Thursday, though, he supposed.

“Tuskers for both of you?” she asked. “Which one of you’s paying today?”

“Oh, he’s paying,” Jela said, gesturing at Capheus as he sat down in the red plastic chair beside him at the small table. Capheus shrugged amiably. “Him, definitely. He’s paying for mine at least. But you should give him one on the house because this motherfucker is going to be a father.”

“Is that so?” Mama Wilfred asked with a generous grin. 

“You don’t need to give me anything,” he said, demurring sheepishly from the attention. 

“That was not what I asked,” she protested with her hands firmly on her hips and a playful twinkle in her eye.

“Yes, it’s true,” Capheus said, grinning warmly. Much of him was glad to be finally telling people about it. There was a beauty in the simple joy he got to tell people about that he enjoyed sitting with, pretending the rest of the complications to the situation didn’t exist.

“Is this with that foreign girl you had around here before you moved on us?”

“Susan, yes.”

“When are you planning on this baby showing up?” she asked, leaning on the bar.

“Beginning of May, best we can tell,” he said.

“May, you said?” she asked, looking up at the ceiling thoughtfully for a moment before laughing under her breath. “You made quick work of things, son,” she added like she was almost impressed. 

As Jela laughed with her. Capheus shrugged again, scratching his head bashfully as he felt the tips of his ears start to burn. He smiled broadly down at the floor, slouched back in the chair.

“How’s your mother doing?” she asked a little more seriously. 

“She’s still doing really well. Her energy’s been up most of the time recently,” he said, sitting up a little straighter.

“She must be thrilled about this,” she said, reaching down into the cooler under the bar and pulling up the two bottles of beer.

“Oh, I’m sure you can imagine,” he said. “I think she’s more ready for this than either of us is. Though she may just drive Susan crazy with all her attention before the baby even gets here.”

“I’m sure she is,” she said with a hearty laugh, opening the bottles. “You better bring that baby around once they show up.”

“Mm-hmm,” Jela jumped in, shaking his head. “Nope. This one, he’s taking his girl and leaving us.”

“You’re doing what?” she said disbelievingly as she set the bottles in front of them and Capheus felt his heart sink again, scratching at a spot on the table with his thumbnail. The goodbyes hadn’t gotten any easier the more of them he had made. Each of them pulled on yet another thread tied around his heart, a reminder of what he was leaving behind. 

Sun understood, in some ways. She’d already left her home country behind her indefinitely, and hadn’t gotten the chances to say goodbye that he had. On some level, she felt the weight he did in leaving, the pull of each specific knotted thread that anchored him here, but it didn’t quite mirror her own relationship to the place she was from. Korea had forced her out, in its own way. Her choice to leave had been much less of a choice. It changed the way she missed the place. She missed it for what it had been, what it could be, but not for what it was to her right now. In his heart, the excitement of travel aside, he missed his home already, and the rounds of farewells reminded him just what it was. Coming back here, he felt the pull even stronger. 

“Where you all going?” she asked.

“California,” he said, picking up the beer bottle delicately by the neck. “It’s where Susan’s from. She has a whole house to herself there.”

“Given that, it’s almost a wonder you didn’t take off earlier,” she said. He shrugged and took a long, cool sip. “What can you tell me about this house? Is it big?”

“I don’t really know, I haven’t seen it yet,” he said, hoping they wouldn’t press him for the details that didn’t exist. He’d tried to be as vague as possible in describing it, but knew they’d both thrown out little details to the various people they’d talked to, probably contradicting themselves in their imagination of it by this point. “She says it’s nice. All I really know for certain is that it’s near the ocean.” Mama Wilfred nodded approvingly.

“California. You going to be near Hollywood?” she asked.

“I don’t really know,” he shrugged. “Santa Monica? I think they’re both near Los Angeles, but I don’t quite know where everything there is yet.”

“Closer to Hollywood than here, though, can’t argue with that,” she said, pointing a finger at him.

“I suppose I can’t,” he laughed.

“I can’t say I blame you for wanting to move there, but we are going miss seeing your face around here,” she said. Capheus could see Jela wince as she said it, still shrouded in his uncanny quiet as he sat across the table. He had one foot up on the chair, leg hugged in against his body as he sipped his beer. “I mean, more than we already do. And your mama, she’s going with you, too?”

“You know I wouldn’t leave without her,” Capheus smiled. 

“No, you wouldn’t, would you,” Mama Wilfred said quietly, leaning forward against the bar. “You’re a good son like that. And it would be cruel to take her grandbaby away from her before she even got to meet them. I mean you, you’re all she’s got.”

“I know,” Capheus said, leaning in towards the table and pulling at the corner of the label on the bottle. He was still worried about dragging her any more into the world of uncertainty they were committing to, but that wasn’t part of the story they were telling. They couldn’t. This story, no one questioned it because it sounded so obviously like trading up towards prosperity, stability. For what it was worth, it was half true. They hadn’t had to worry about the basic expenses of living almost since their connection had gone live, and certainly not since Sun had arrived. Even beyond that kind of material prosperity, he felt lifted and rich in the love and support that surrounded him every day. 

But as far as stability - the fact he couldn’t tell anyone where they were actually going almost didn’t matter, because he wasn’t sure how long they would be there, how long it would be safe to be there. He couldn’t even say which country his own child would be born in, six months out from now. He’d always thrived on feeling rooted in where he lived, for as far afield as his mind and his dreams might wander. It wasn’t even so much the prospect of moving, of going somewhere new as it was the potential never to really land in one place again, a leaf ever on the breeze. His mother, she was as resilient as she could be, but he didn’t want to see that tested along the way.

“What’s going to happen to your van when you go?” she asked.

“It’s all Jela’s now, so whatever happens next with it is up to him,” he smiled through a resigned sigh, trying to sneak a look casually at Jela as he spoke. His head had perked up; his back straightened. “Whether he wants to find someone else to work it with him, sell it, drive it into a brick wall. His decision.”

“You serious?” Jela asked, incredulous. “You wouldn’t play me with something like this. You’re not funny enough for that kind of a joke.”

“No joke,” he said through a shrug. “What am I going to do, fold it up and put it in a suitcase? Drive it across the ocean? You know that thing is as much yours as it is mine. Or, at least, it was.”

“You sure you don’t want me to buy out your half of it or something?”

“It’s the least I can offer you,” Capheus shrugged. “Besides, I know if I made you an offer like that, you’d try to haggle me down to this anyway. So I’m just saving you the trouble.”

“Can you believe this shit?” Jela said to Mama Wilfred as he uncurled himself and sat up straight. “This rich motherfucker’s just dropping a van out of the sky like it’s an old pair of shoes he’s done with.” 

As the two of them laughed together warmly over it, Capheus laughed softly, but he felt farther removed, out of place, staring at Jela’s comment like spilled salt on the table.

“How are Wilfred’s kids doing? He and Sarah just had another little girl, no?” Capheus asked, hoping desperately to shift the focus away from himself, sure that she would jump at the chance to talk about her own grandchildren. 

He half listened as she launched into enthusiastic description of her new granddaughter, but the bulk of his attention rested on Jela. So much of him wished he could tell him more about what had been going on with him the last several months, but he worried what that might mean for Jela’s safety, for his family’s safety. The developments of the last week or so had strengthened his silence all the more. The idea of something he couldn’t tell him still sank like a brick within him, though. 

In him, he still saw echoes of the little kid he had been when they’d met. He felt echoes of being the kid who had met him. That first day after school when Jela had pulled him aside and explained the scheme he had for getting free ice cream from one of the street vendors that had required two people and they had taken off on that adventure together. His mouth fell into a soft, quiet smile as he thought about it. He was going to miss him, but in some ways, he already had for months. 

Wolfgang grabbed the bottle of beer off the table in front of Capheus and took a long sip out of it, holding it up to look at the label as he swallowed. His face looked lightly ruddy and warm, and Capheus could feel the warm haze of a well-built beer buzz drifting across the table to him. He lightly gripped his own beer bottle with his other hand where it rested on the table. Smiling silently at the picture of the elephant in profile, Wolfgang set it back down in front of Capheus, turning his attention to the conversation Jela and Mama Wilfred were having, which had rolled along without him into news about the neighborhood.

“You remember, that art thing with the eyes from a couple years back,” Jela said. 

“Right, the French guy. They’re doing what now?” Mama Wilfred asked.

“They’re stealing the fucking picture tarps off of the roofs,” Jela said.

“You sure it’s not some other art thing?”

“I don’t know, but it’s leaving holes in people’s roofs. They want to come in here and mess with people’s roofs by adding to them, I don’t really get it, but at least it’s one more thing to keep the rain out. But taking it away?”

Capheus had a vague memory of the tarps with giant pictures of eyes going up on some of the roofs a ways back. There had been a greater volume of international reporter types milling around with their camera bags and vests of many pockets for a number of weeks. He couldn’t say that he was too surprised that a project like this was disappearing with as little explanation as it appeared. Different kinds of international groups had projects that appeared and disappeared almost like migrating animals, using the neighborhood as some sort of stage for a performance largely for people very far away, though few were quite like this one.

He looked over towards where Wolfgang sat next to Jela, raising his eyebrows as he remembered various snippets of these projects. Wolfgang shrugged silently and sipped his own beer. 

Capheus listened to Jela and Mama Wilfred dig through neighborhood gossip. He dropped into conversation where he could, but found himself mostly sitting back quietly, gently peeling at the succession of bottles in front of him with soft smile on his face. Part of him was just trying to soak up the familiarity of the people and the setting around him, the alcohol in his system leaving him a little more porous in that regard. It also weakened the filters that kept his awareness focused in one place and not split between eight.

As a result, Wolfgang, shields also partially dissolved, seemed to flit in and out of the room from his own beer session with Felix on the couch in St. Petersburg. Capheus found himself having to work at filtering out the tinny sound effects from the old kung fu movie they were watching on TV that bled into the periphery of his awareness, as if the radio in the corner was their soundtrack.

Jela was actually the first to say that it was probably time he was getting home. “Before Eleana sharpens her kitchen knife too much,” he said. Capheus had thought it a short time before, but didn’t want to be the one pushing to break things up any more than he already was. 

“So, you done driving?” Jela asked as he stood up, grabbing the back of the chair to steady himself as he did. “When are you actually leaving?”

“We’re out of here Wednesday morning,” Capheus said. “I’ll drive up until Tuesday if you want me to, though. I wish you had more time to plan your next step, but, well,” he laughed sadly under his breath as he stood up and Jela echoed him a bit more earnestly. He tried to avoid saying anything that would draw too much attention to the finality of it.

“You’re going to come back at some point, though,” Jela said, firm. “For a visit at least.”

“This will always be home in one way or another, wherever I go,” Capheus replied with absolute sincerity. “Doesn’t Van Damme always come back?” he added more lightly with a chuckle, trying to push back the doubt that crept around the edges of his thoughts.

“Damn right, he does,” Jela said, reaching over to pull him into a tight hug. As Capheus held him, he felt the threads knotted around his heart pull as if he were about to step onto the plane that very moment, even though he would see Jela tomorrow, early, for the route. He pressed his lips together, trying to clear the damp itch edging his eyes with a deep breath. Patting his friend’s back heartily, he pulled back.

“What am I going to do without you?” Capheus said, smiling and pushing the breath through his nose purposefully once more.

“Oh, you’re going to be plenty busy,” Jela snorted back, but the lines of his face didn’t seem to be able to pull together into the joking mask he so often wore. “I’ll miss you, though. You send pictures as soon as you have anything to show. You let us know how things are going. We’ll be here.”

“Quarter to seven tomorrow, then? The usual Friday?” Capheus asked.

“Quarter to seven,” Jela sighed. “Shit, I need to get to sleep.”

Each of them said goodnight to each other and to Mama Wilfred and walked out the door, almost as if it were any other night.

As Capheus watched Jela start walking home, he realized Wolfgang was standing there with him again, watching alongside him. As Jela disappeared between the houses, they turned for the van, crunching down the gravel quietly.

“Do you miss Berlin?” Capheus asked as they walked.

“Parts of it,” Wolfgang said. “Probably most of it. You can’t live somewhere that long and have only one opinion about the whole place.” Capheus nodded in the dark, looking out over the dim silhouette of the boxy, tin-roofed skyline hugging close to the ground. 

“I don’t always miss who I was there, though,” Wolfgang said. “Things are boring here in Peter, but, I don’t know, there’s a lot to be said for boring.”

Capheus laughed bleakly as they approached the van, “Boring’s certainly not the worst option.”

“You good to drive yet?” Wolfgang asked.

“Eh, kind of on the line,” Capheus said, “probably best to wait a little longer.” He pulled out his phone to send Sun a message letting her know. “Come on, let’s go up top,” he said as he shoved the phone back in his pocket and started climbing up the back of the van. Wolfgang followed his each step up to the van roof where the two of them sprawled out side by side, each resting his head on his hands. The night was clear and still, though with the moon and the city as bright as they were, only the brightest stars were visible.

“When we first got this van, I think Jela and I would come up here every night after we were done.”

“It’s a nice spot,” Wolfgang agreed from the other side of the roof. He turned his head towards Capheus. “You going to miss Nairobi?”

“Yeah," said Capheus heavily, looking back over and catching Wolfgang’s eyes solidly, seriously even through the warm haze they shared. “Though, I’m realizing I already do, in a lot of ways.”

“What do you mean?” Wolfgang asked.

“It’s difficult to pin down,” he said. “Where I’ve been living, it doesn’t feel like quite the same Nairobi I grew up in. But it’s hard to say how much of that is the change of place and how much of it is change in me. I haven’t spent much time here since we moved. There’s a lot that’s completely the same. You know, I come here, it looks more or less like it always has. But, I don’t know, like when we were talking about people taking the picture tarps on the roof, you know, it doesn’t feel like it touches me like it used to. And it doesn’t - no one’s going to take anything off of my roof. I don’t need to spend any time worrying about my roof. I’d almost forgotten about it.”

“I take it that something you had to worry about before?” Wolfgang asked.

“Almost everytime it rained,” Capheus said, remembering setting out buckets to catch the drips that came through the roof in the old place, the dim, damp chill keeping his mother in bed, unhappy about being there. “I mean, I’d patch it up and sometimes it would be fine for a while, a couple months maybe. But even then, once it’s been fixed for a little while, you don’t really think about it until it’s broken again.”

Wolfgang grunted thoughtfully from where he lay.

“Anyway, there’s a whole handful of other things like that, and it’s strange to realize you haven’t been aware of them,” Capheus said. 

“It’s more true of some things than others,” Wolfgang said. “The body can put up with a lot. The body can forget and forgive, I think. I don’t know about the rest.”

“I suppose both forgiveness and forgetfulness come in many forms,” Capheus said. A moment of uncomfortable silence broke spontaneously into laughter.

“So you miss your leaky roof?” Wolfgang asked with the last of his laughter.

“Oh, shut it,” Capheus said. “You know that’s not what I mean. It’s just, it’s strange to come back here and feel like I’m not a part of it, like I don’t belong where I’m from. Which I guess would be true if I went back to my mother’s village. But I think that’s what I’m afraid of.”

“What do you mean, then?”

“Not remembering. You know, on the surface, I remember being there. I remember what it looks like, the names and faces of the people. But I don’t really remember what it was like to be there. And I don’t think that’s something I can ever get back.”

“Why is that place something you’d want to remember? Didn’t they try to kill you?”

“The place didn’t. Most of the people didn’t. It’s like you said, anywhere you spend that much time, you can’t have just one simple opinion about it. It’s still a part of who I am, whether it’s good or bad or something else,” Capheus said and Wolfgang turned away from him, looking up to the stars again. “I mean, this place wasn’t always kind to me either, though it was never quite as aggressively hostile as that. But I still feel like I’d have nowhere to belong if I didn’t belong here.”

“My mother used to say that about this place,” Wolfgang said. “Or, not here, but, you know what I mean. Petersburg. It was why she was upset that they changed the name of the city. It was always Leningrad to her. I get it in some ways. The city I was born in doesn’t exist the same way either.”

“Were you not born in Berlin?”

“East Berlin,” he corrected. “The wall was still up when I was very young. I can just barely remember it being there for real. It stopped being a physical barrier basically all at once, in one day. But the idea of it took a lot longer to take apart. It’s still there in the minds of some people, I think, from both sides, but the city, the feel of it, that changed. We changed. There was more expectation that we would change than that the Wessis would. It’s the people as much as the place.”

“No, I think that’s true,” Capheus agreed. “I guess, my father,” he began and then stopped, trying to form words around what it was that had been nagging at him as he thought about leaving, about taking the baby away from where he’d grown up. “He let go of where he came from for me, and for my mother. He had to so he could stay with us.”

Wolfgang scoffed.

“He wasn’t from anywhere near where my mother grew up. He actually grew up here, in the city. He came to teach at the school in Kisima and that’s where he met my mother.”

“He was your mother’s teacher? That’s, uh,”

“It wasn’t like that,” Capheus interrupted. “She wasn’t a student there anymore by the time he got there. She just had younger siblings.”

“Oh, I guess that’s okay. So he gave up the city for your mother and for you?”

“It was more than just city life. That, I think he was ready to give up. But he basically gave up his culture, his identity. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I heard him speak his own language. The only piece of it that I really have is in my name. But it was what he had to do when even his name seemed like something violent.”

“I mean, I grew up Russian in Germany. I have some idea what it means for the different parts of your heritage to hate each other. We have this saying, ‘What’s good for the Russian, for the German is death.’”

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” Wolfgang chuckled. "They say it the other way around, too."

“Is that Russian or German?” Capheus asked.

“Does it matter?” Wolfgang asked in response and Capheus shrugged.

“Anyway, it didn’t matter that he tried to erase that part of who he was. They still killed him because of it,” Capheus said, the frustration rising in his voice. “And, I just don’t know if I can be the kind of father who gives that much up. You know, it’s easy to say you would die for your children. I think I can say that now, and mean it. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the hardest thing to ask. I don’t know where or who I will be asked to be in order to stay safe, and what sense of place I can offer my child.” He took a deep breath and looked over at Wolfgang. “I don’t know if I’m making any sense or if I’m just burping out my worries right now.”

“No, I think I see what you’re getting at,” Wolfgang said. “You know, your father, maybe he didn’t need to give up who he was that way. Doesn’t seem like it made things all that much easier for him or for you in the end. You don’t have to take all of this on yourself; you’re not going into this alone.”

“I suppose not.”

“All I can tell you is that if it weren’t for Felix, I’d be in a lot worse shape. It would have been a lot harder to come here. When you left the village, you still had your mother.”

“True.”

“And she’s coming with you now.”

“Yes.”

“You know, I think a lot of the sense of place you’re talking about is in the people you care about, the ones that stay with you,” Wolfgang said and Capheus turned to him with a certain degree of surprise. “Things change. Places change. People change, too, but people like you and your mother, what’s important between you won’t ever get lost. That kid of yours has a lot going for them. I don’t know what it all adds up to, but I think it’s good. It has to be.”

“Oh?” asked Capheus with an intrigued confusion.

“Honestly, if you and Sun can’t handle this, I’m totally fucked.”

“Oh,” Capheus said, trying to hold a laugh inside his mouth but failing.

“What?” Wolfgang said defensively.

“No, it’s nothing,” Capheus said, rearranging his face. “I’m just surprised to hear you say that.”

Wolfgang sighed and rubbed his face tiredly, “You’re right, it is nothing. I probably shouldn’t even be thinking it.”

“But,” Capheus said, intrigued to hear him think in this direction.

“But, I know it’s important to her,” he finished. “I don’t like to think that far in the future, but I can’t pretend she’s not thinking about it. Listen, I’m going to need a lot more time, or at least more alcohol, before I can actually talk about this. Let’s just pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“Okay,” said Capheus and for what seemed to be minutes they just lie there and looked up at the stars in silence. 

“Your father was such a different man than mine,” Wolfgang laughed bleakly. “I’m somewhat confused by people who actually have good relationships with their fathers.”

“I don’t know that you can say I have any kind of relationship with my father right now,” Capheus said, the idea lying uncomfortably with him. “There’s so much that would have to be different for that to be true, because it was true. I don’t know that I would be the same person now.”

“I wish I was going to Mumbai with you,” Wolfgang said. “I should be the one running this job.”

“You still are. We couldn’t do this job without you. None of the rest of us,” Capheus began.

“Are criminals like me?” Wolfgang interrupted flatly.

“That wasn’t what I was going to say,” Capheus protested. “Anyway, we talked about this and we want to risk as few people getting burned as possible. I’m not thrilled about Sun being the one on point for this either, but I also know she can handle herself.”

Wolfgang let out a frustrated sigh.

“You sure that’s the only reason you wish you were coming to Mumbai?” Capheus said suggestively and Wolfgang swatted at him playfully from the other side of the van roof. As he tried to roll out of the way, laughing heartily, he lost his balance and rolled off the side of the bus, tucking and rolling as he hit the ground.

“Fuck, are you alright?” Wolfgang asked nervously as his head poked over the side of the bus roof.

“I’m fine,” said Capheus, standing up and and brushing himself off. Wolfgang slid over to the edge of the roof and jumped down, landing on his feet, but stumbling backward and falling over himself.

“I’m sorry,” said Wolfgang as he got back on his feet.

“No, really, I’m fine,” said Capheus, inspecting himself as best he could in the low light. “Clothes aren’t ripped, I’m not bleeding. Pretty sure, at least. Don’t worry, that’s actually not the first time I’ve gotten off the roof of the van that way. I should probably get home, though.”

“You sure you’re good to drive now?” Wolfgang asked, still with concern in his voice.

“No, I’m good now. If there was any buzz left, it just got knocked out of me,” Capheus said confidently. “Just because you’re not, doesn’t mean I’m not, too. My head actually feels a lot clearer than it did even before I started drinking tonight.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and flicked it on. The clock read 12:16. “Shit, is that the time? I definitely have to get home. I still have to wake up early. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I get nervous writing about Capheus’s background in rural Kenya and in Kibera, because there’s a lot to screw up, particularly as a white writer here, but I also don’t want to under-write him as a character just because it’s hard. He _is_ an integral part of this story. That said, please let me know if there's something I can do better in this respect. 
> 
> About the people who’d been coming in and stealing parts of roofs from the neighborhood:  
> This was a real thing that was happening at the time this chapter takes place, though I didn’t know about it until after I’d set that time frame. Mama Wilfred and Jela were originally going to be talking more generally about a problem with the water system here, but this seemed more compelling and was certainly more timely. 
> 
> The short version of the situation is as follows: in 2009, French street artist JR put up an installation called “Women Are Heroes,” which comprised close up photos of women’s eyes printed on large tarps which were then installed on rooftops in Kibera and photographed from above. At some point last year, Deutsch ad agency, who works with water access non-profit Water Is Life, decided to stage what they called an “art heist for good” wherein they would take the “Women Are Heroes” photos from the rooftops where they’d been installed, auction them off, and use the proceeds to fund water access projects in Kibera. The results have been somewhat mixed. The pieces have not raised as much at auction as had been anticipated, and residents from whose roofs the pieces were taken have complained that their roofs were left in poor condition without any recompense. 
> 
> Here’s some more info with diverse opinions about the campaign:
> 
>   * [Aerial photo of the “Women Are Heroes” installation](https://s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/centaur-wp/creativereview/prod/content/uploads/2015/11/Press_Image_1.jpg)
>   * [Voice of Kibera Blog](http://blog.voiceofkibera.org/)
>   * [Deutsch's 'Art Heist' may be art fraud, says JR](http://www.campaignlive.com/article/deutschs-art-heist-may-art-fraud-says-jr/1373282)
>   * [Water Is Life Steals Art From Kenya, So It Can Give Back Something More](http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-water-life-steals-art-kenya-so-it-can-give-something-more-back-167924)
>   * [Why has an ad agency 'stolen' this JR artwork?](http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2015/november/05/why-has-an-ad-agency-stolen-this-jr-artwork/)
> 



	22. The Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Third Floor. Sun massaged her knuckles low, in front of her, even though there was little chance she would need them here. At least she hoped. She wasn’t precisely sure what she was heading into. 
> 
> Fourth floor. The mother with her two young sons got off, leaving Sun, Kala and Wolfgang alone in the elevator.
> 
> “We’re getting off at the next floor,” Kala said quietly after the doors had closed.

Sun woke up to the jolt of the plane touching down. Capheus’s eyes were still plastered to the window, watching as the runway slipped quickly by them. Though she hadn’t watched herself, she could feel the glow of wonder still coming off of him from watching the city emerge and come into focus below them as the plane had descended. Her lips curled in soft, silent satisfaction at the thought of it. She hadn’t entirely gotten over watching that happen herself, and preferring a window seat, if it were possible to obtain one without seeming overly invested in it. She’d ceded it to Capheus in this case, both for practical and more ephemeral reasons. His joy sent a kind of pleasantly gentle warmth washing through her that she’d come to almost crave sometimes.

The sun had been going down as they’d arrived at the airport in Nairobi, streaking the sky with autumn-crisp tones. She’d been tired enough that she’d slept through the six hours of the flight without needing to take any of the Benadryl that Kala had somewhat reluctantly offered her when she had asked for some kind of sleep aid for the flight. The sunset they’d left bled into the sunrise welcoming them now. It made the places almost bleed into each other from this perspective. Sun tried to dodge her thoughts about their arrival. She’d tried to stay out of the loop as much as possible in the planning phases of what they were doing, but as much as she’d come to trust the judgment of the others, it had been difficult to keep her head out of it on many levels.

_Just lie back and think of England or some shit,_ Nomi had giggled to her as she had worried about how she was going to avoid thinking of Mumbai as she traveled there. Her eyes slipped shut again.

_Bulldogs, London, The Beatles_

As the plane came to a stop at the gate, she could hear just well enough through her earplugs to note that someone was speaking through the sound system, as often happened at the end of a flight. With both her and Capheus wearing earplugs, the voice flattened into a dull, pulsing squawk. She’d been through so many flights she could probably do most of the narration here: _Blah blah local time and temperature, blah blah don’t get up yet, blah blah Thank You for choosing our airline._

The plane jerked slightly as it came to a stop at the gate. Sun could feel the rustle of motion as the people around her stretched from their seats almost in chorus to start collecting their things. Sun remained seated with her eyes closed, even as people bumped her in passing through the aisle.

_Stonehenge, Sherlock Holmes, The Spice Girls_

She knew Nomi had been joking, but felt like it was helping. Her eyes finally opened as she felt Capheus touch her arm lightly. The bulk of the passengers had pushed their way off the plane. She swung out of the seat and pulled down the single suitcase the three of them shared. Capheus reached for the handle as he stepped into the aisle, but Sun shook her head and smiled quietly as she rested both hands on it in front of her.

They stepped off the plane and slipped through the airport. Sun kept her eyes focused on the floor a good five to ten meters ahead of her. It was more or less how she always moved through any given airport, a quickstep focus on the next destination. She was dimly aware of Shiro and Capheus trying to take in the detail of the place behind her. She caught the vaulted honeycomb of the ceiling and the art lining the walls in brief glimpses, working to keep her eyes on the floor ahead of her.

_Soccer, potatoes, Churchill, fuck, who was the guy with the big mustache?_

Sun finally took out her earplugs as they approached passport control and customs. The hum of background noise, of a dozen barely distinguishable conversations happening at once, varied little airport to airport, except perhaps in the overall cadence of the sound. The combination of nervousness and hunger churned in her stomach unpleasantly.

They had chosen not to bring any food to simplify their movement through security and customs, but Sun was starting to regret that as hunger began to gnaw at her stomach with redoubled vigor.

_Heathrow, lots of the people working this same role at Heathrow looked much like the ones in front of her._

The paperwork had been carefully arranged for them by Nomi and Kala to minimize their time in this phase, the visas paid and approved online. Sun chewed the inside of her lip, waiting patiently to pass through. She wondered briefly if she bit hard enough that it bled if it would help with her hunger at all. They nodded and smiled their way through quickly with their minimal luggage and made it out to the pickup area where Kala and Lito waited for them. 

Kala waved from where she stood near the curb with a broad, but tight-lipped smile on her face. She was dressed in athletic gear not much different from what Sun had worn on the flight at Kala’s recommendation. Her long hair was up in a braided ponytail poking through the back of a cap. As she embraced Sun warmly, the warmth of her pushed away the calculated detachment of the façade Sun had wheeled through the airport. Sun breathed deeply as they held each other, exhaling some of the tension she’d been holding since the plane had landed. 

“You’re actually here,” Kala said with quiet electricity in her voice. She felt a continuity between them, as if her own arms reached around through Kala to hold herself, their bodies one and the same. Kala squeezed her shoulders in her hands as she released her. 

Lito leaned in to greet her with a courteous kiss on each cheek and Sun felt something of the same kind of extension of herself through him as they stood there together. Finally meeting others of her cluster face to face, the cynic and the romantic that occupied competing parts of her conscience smiled and scowled at each other in turn, as she considered the degree to which the totality she felt around Capheus was as much about their being clustermates as it was about their being lovers. 

“It’s so good to finally meet more of you,” Shiro said to Kala as they stood facing each other, Shiro examining Kala’s face with her eyes, her hand, with a sense of warmth, love and pride as if she were her own long-lost daughter. It was much the same way she had first greeted Sun upon her initial arrival in Nairobi. The feeling radiated between them, growing like the early light of the day as it was reflected in each of them back at the others. Perhaps this was just what family - real family - felt like.

“Your flight was uneventful, I trust?” Kala asked, eyes dancing warmly from face to face between them. 

“It was wonderful,” said Capheus. “To watch the sunrise when you can see that much of the sky, as you are flying directly into it - what a sight!”

“I wish we had more time to stop and chat right now,” Kala said, looking from face to face. “But we have an appointment to get to, Sun.” She raised her eyebrows and jerked her head to the side as she spoke. Sun heard Lito snort from behind her and Kala waved him away with an idle frustration.

“Are we doing that now?” Sun asked, trying to mask the surprise in her voice, though it meshed with a bittersweet relief. Trying to keep your mind off of the place where you were seemed impractical over any real stretch of time. At some point, she supposed, you stopped thinking consciously about where you were, but it took significant time to reach that level with any given place. After three months - maybe three and a half - in Nairobi, parts of the city had become as though transparent around her, the way that one often sees clouds in the sky without the image of them registering in any lasting way. Just like the clouds though, the city still had its moments of demanding her consciousness in that very moment. It had taken weeks of every place bearing something pointedly new to reach that though. Her stomach growled again and she wondered how much her hunger was amplifying the rest of what was in her head.

“We’ll see you soon,” Lito said casually, the door of the cab beside him open. Sun hugged Capheus and Shiro goodbye as they got into the cab with Lito. As she watched the car pull out of sight, Sun heaved a sigh as she turned to catch Kala’s eyes again.

As soon as they slipped into the next cab, Kala opened the zippered pouch around her waist and wordlessly handed Sun a packet of cashews.

“Was it that obvious?” asked Sun, tearing into the packet.

“You can thank my mother for those. She said, ‘I don’t have to share anyone’s mind to tell you that a pregnant woman traveling will be wanting a good snack,’” Kala giggled conspiratorially and Sun smiled quietly as she chewed the creamy sweetness out of the salty-sweet spiced cashews with a sense of deep relief. “But I must tell you that I almost tore into them on my way over here. I thought I was going to cry I felt so hungry, even though I ate something just before I left.”

“Sounds about right,” Sun said, rolling her eyes between bites. 

She realized as she pulled out another nut that she hadn’t thought about where she was since she’d started eating. She looked out the window of the cab and immediately regretted the thought.

_Guards with those weird, tall hats, tea and crumpets_

_Cashews,_ she thought, trying to focus on her snack. In her mind she pictured a pool of water with a single cashew in the center of it. Ripples radiated from where the cashew sat and she visualized the water slowly stilling. She felt Kala’s mind gently nudging into hers as she started laughing beside her and it bubbled over until both of them were overcome with laughter, seemingly at nothing.

“Does it really get that bad?” Kala said.

“I don’t know that I can explain it any better than what you felt earlier,” Sun said, picking around the cashew bag trying to see if she could find any more wayward morsels She licked the prickles of salt and pepper disappointedly from her fingers after finding nothing more.

“But does that happen like that frequently?” Kala asked, her voice growing slightly nervous as she secreted away the empty cashew packet.

“It comes and goes,” Sun shrugged. “It’s not constant.”

Kala’s eyes pulled thoughtfully towards the back of the seat in front of her.

“So, you haven’t been to any sort of doctor with this yet, is that right?” Kala asked after a brief pause. Sun looked quizzically at Kala for a moment before answering, wondering why she was asking this series of questions to which she already knew the answer. She herself had been as much of a medical adviser as she’d had thus far. She’d spent time in her body, just trying it on. Most of the others had at some point or another thus far. Will and Riley were the only exceptions, each for their own, fairly transparent reasons. The rest of them, they’d each found her in a quiet, solitary moment to ask that favor of her in varied, almost apologetic ways. She almost wished she had something more dramatic to share with them, but there were still moments where she had to remind herself these days, especially now that the nausea had pretty much put itself to rest. The changes that had come so far were unignorable over the full course of any given day, but in a way that required piecing together any number of subtle signs, things like the hunger, that could be explained away unremarkably on their own.

“Do you…” Kala began a moment later, turning back, but finding herself unable to find something to complete the question, she drifted towards the window. The stream of consciousness bleeding faintly into her own, she realized why she was pushing this series of inane questions and her lip curled slyly. She might as well be talking about vegetables. It wasn’t clear whether this conversation was more for Kala’s benefit or for her own. 

“You know, I hear that the eggplant harvest is at an all-time high this year,” Sun said in a half-interested tone, trying to watch Kala’s face without the appearance of staring.

“Is that right?” Kala replied almost automatically, tracing a programmatic rise and fall in her voice though her eyes were cast somewhere far distant that Sun couldn’t discern without intruding. After a deafeningly long few seconds, Kala looked back at her, her face twisted into bemused confusion as she finally processed the words she’d already responded to. Their faces twitched briefly as they looked at each other, trying to figure out what the play was here before they broke out in low snorts of laughter yet again.

“What do I know about harvesting eggplants?” Sun said as she pulled together her mask of composure again. The ride seemed to push and pull into a cycle of moments like these, pushing back in fits against the worries that pecked at each of their minds. 

The cab dropped them off outside a chic-looking coffee shop not far from the lake. The two of them dipped inside the store for just a moment, until the cab was out of view. 

“Here, this has everything you’ll need,” Kala said as they stood in the corner of the shop, unclipping the belt pouch from her waist and offering it to Sun. “Might be easier if you put it on now.”

“Can I help you, miss?” the young man said from behind the gleaming dark stone of the counter.

“Oh, no, thank you,” Kala said and they stepped back out of the air-conditioned cafe into the growing humidity of the day.

“Anything I need to know about what’s in here?” Sun asked as she clipped the bag around her waist. 

“Not right now,” Kala said. “Sorry. We’ll tell you what you need when you need it.”

“No, I understand,” Sun said. Her unique relation to Agarwal made her the best person to do direct reconnaissance on her, but the worst person to plan it, so she was receiving any instructions - any details at all - on a need to know basis. In fact, she couldn’t even say for certain that this was about Agarwal in the carefully minimal analysis she’d thrown at it. But it was for that reason that she was in Mumbai right now. So far, all she had been told was to arrive dressed and ready for a workout, so here she was.

“So, shall we go for a little run?” Kala said.

“If that’s what you’d like,” Sun replied evenly, stretching her legs and arms out.

“It won’t be that much of a run,” Kala said apologetically as she mimicked Sun’s movements.

They took off at a slow pace, Sun struggling to pace herself in such a way to let Kala, who was not a runner at all, lead, to let Kala be the one who knew where they were headed as they weaved between the pedestrians. Kala stopped several places to catch her breath, and each time Sun was unsure whether they’d arrived at their destination, trying to size up the buildings nearby as she waited for instructions.

When they finally stopped, Kala pointed indistinctly at a long, moderately high concrete block of a building as she bent over, her hands resting on her legs as she tried to regain enough breath to speak. There was something familiar about this building.

“Here?” Sun asked, a little sweaty as the humid air clung to her and Kala nodded. At this, she began to consider the building more carefully and then turned around, realizing it probably wasn’t that smart to think about it directly.

_Bulldogs. Little, baby bulldogs._

Wolfgang was sitting on the curb, waiting quietly, when she turned around. Kala had more or less recovered, though her complexion still had a ruddy glow about it. He was dressed in black even though no one here could see him, perhaps out of habit, and holding a plain white cup of black coffee.

“Don’t you work today?” Sun asked.

“Called in sick,” he said, his fingers rubbing the cup idly in his hands. He nodded towards the building behind her. “You know, it doesn’t look so different from where my aunt lives, if you look at it just on its own.”

The memory of the drab concrete block across the grass in St. Petersburg took hold in her mind until she felt Kala’s hand on her arm a moment later. She and Wolfgang both turned to her in the same quiet moment, saying nothing. She felt like she owed them a particular response right then, but couldn’t say what it was.

Kala strode casually in the door of the building and right to the elevator with Sun and Wolfgang to either side of her. Sun marveled at the confident way she moved in here, especially in contrast to the nervousness that had bled over from her in the cab. She tried to keep her eyes down, following the fall of Kala’s sneakers, but the cursory glances she had taken around suggested to her that this was a residential building. Wolfgang’s comment about how similar the building was to his aunt’s apartment building had set the idea gently in her head, but the minimal lobby pushed it forward further. When they’d initially discussed the idea, it had sounded like they would try to get access to materials through her work. The setting seemed to suggest otherwise.

As they stepped into the elevator with a few other people, Sun was taken back to the memory of walking out for her first paid fight. The feeling of the small space like some kind of echo chamber for her own nervous energy, almost like it could propel her somewhere. 

Third Floor. She massaged her knuckles low, in front of her, even though there was little chance she would need them here. At least she hoped. She wasn’t precisely sure what she was heading into. 

Fourth floor. The mother with her two young sons got off, leaving Sun, Kala and Wolfgang alone in the elevator.

“We’re getting off at the next floor,” Kala said quietly after the doors had closed. “I’ll be waiting near the elevator and the stairs to watch for anyone who might come. Wolfgang will show you to the right door. All the tools you need to get in should be the bag I gave you.” 

As the door opened and they stepped out, Kala leaned up to kiss Wolfgang quickly before stepping to the other side of the tall plant standing to the side of the elevator, phone in hand. Sun felt the echo of lips on her own, but she wasn’t sure whose, reaching down into her as her eyes darted down the silent hallway. 

Any resemblance to the apartment block in St. Petersburg vanished on the inside of the building, an elegantly patterned carpet lining the plant-dotted hallway. There was a single window at the far end of the hallway that the sunlight seemed to be coming through at a direct angle. 

Wolfgang checked his watch again and nodded silently to his right.

“There’s a ring of keys in your bag. You’ll know which ones you need. Just go ahead and get them out like you’re heading for your own apartment,” he said in a low voice. Sun followed his lead, unzipping the pouch and digging out the small ring of keys, trying not to think too hard about the other items in the bag as her fingers brushed past them. A phone, an oddly-shaped cloth wallet, some sort of folded knife or tool of some kind. There was more in there besides, but she didn’t have the time or attention to spare in examining them further. She plucked out the keys and looked over them, her fingers settling on one that had a purple dot on its head that grabbed her attention.

She realized the two of them had stopped in front of one particular door, heavy and dark, textured with the grain of the wood. It felt distantly familiar, somehow. There door was equipped with a deadbolt as well as the keyhole in the knob. Sun slipped the key into the deadbolt, trying not to be surprised that it slipped in without the slightest protest. It failed to budge as she tried to turn it, though. Her eyes flicked nervously towards Wolfgang, about three steps away down the still empty hallway. 

“May I?” asked Wolfgang calmly and Sun nodded, though she wasn’t entirely clear what she was agreeing to. A split-second later, she felt herself pushed to the back of her own mind as he took control of her hands, quickly concealing the folded knife along the palm of her hand as he pulled it from the bag. One hand smartly whacked the end of it against the head of the key, the other hand deftly turning the key in the lock. He quickly repeated the process with the lock on the knob and the door opened without further resistance, replacing the knife without ever really having revealed it.

Just as quickly, Wolfgang had left her body just to her again and stood beside her. Sun was mildly shocked at how simple the whole operation had been, though she couldn’t say for certain what she had expected in its place. Wolfgang shrugged wordlessly as she looked back towards him.

The door swung open in front of her. A smartly hung array of pictures lined the smooth cream of the hallway wall as she stepped in. The photos tended towards groups of people smiling into the camera together. She recognized Agarwal in a number of the pictures as she skimmed by, though even in passing, she seemed to have a softer affect than the woman Sun had met.

“Gloves,” Wolfgang directed offhandedly as he scrutinized the layout of the room, examining the occasional photo frame more closely. Sun reached into the pouch, feeling around for anything that might fit the description, pulling out a pair of thin nitrile exam gloves that she slipped on.

The apartment was rather sparsely decorated, save for the gauntlet of photos leading in from the door. What furniture there was also dressed in sleek lines of black and white. The sparse handful of books looked as though they’d never been cracked. It looked like she had walked into the kind of photo used to advertise apartments like this, as though it was inviting some kind of personal touch to complete it in a way she couldn’t quite place. Save the relatively few windows, it wasn’t that far from the design aesthetic of her own apartment back in Seoul, albeit a much more modest iteration of it. She felt her heart sink as she took in the room, the weight of it almost making her stagger, though she couldn’t say precisely why.

Wolfgang slipped easily from room to room around her in near silence, examining what seemed to be precise locations in each room according to some system she hadn’t deciphered. As she followed him around the corner to alcove of a kitchen, she spotted a single mug in the sink, the first thing that seemed to suggest that a person actually lived here.

A flash of red in the corner pulled her eyes towards it as she stepped into the relatively small bedroom, dim with the curtain drawn across the room’s single window. The red-swathed table appeared to be where she kept her idols. Her eyes were drawn to a many-armed goddess that she didn’t recognize, seated in a lotus blossom with a small spray of freesia on the table in front of her. The painting of Shim Cheong her mother had made for her slipped to the front of her mind. In it, the young woman emerged from the lotus dressed in her serene confidence and in her love, in complete confidence of her love as the flower held her up on top of the water. 

Another wave of the same sadness that had given her pause not long after entering the apartment rolled over her and she sat down on the low bed. The feeling began to creep to her face, a vaguely distant, burning ache. The painting from her mother: she had thought off and on about where her mother saw herself in that story, what legacy she was passing to her daughter in that image, or if she had just thought it beautiful. In the story, Shim Cheong had given herself up to the king of the sea to help her blind father see again, but he was so touched by her devotion that he sent her back inside a lotus to be reunited with her family. In the painting, she had always seen her promise to her mother to look after her family. As she had tried to sort out the situation around her brother and her father that had landed her in jail, she had felt like her mother was watching her from the painting, as if she were the one standing in the lotus trying to return. 

For her, though, there could be no return, no joyful reunion in which her father lost his blindness and finally was able to see the world around around him as it truly as. Nor could her mother be the one returned to her in any but the most ephemeral way, and in that respect, she had never left. Sun had said before that she wasn’t any good at fairytales, but right now she felt it more than ever.

The sense of loss tore at her and she found herself trying to wipe tears back from her eyes. They became a wet smear along the bright blue of the nitrile glove that insulated her from any feeling of it on her skin. She felt almost cheated of it, somehow, of the feeling of dampness on her skin. The distance made it as if she were crying for someone else she couldn’t fully inhabit or explain, rather the opposite of what she’d become accustomed to in her connection.

As her eyes looked shallowly around her, she noticed that the bedside table that sat well in arm’s reach was actually a filing cabinet, the handles a matte black on black that had made her miss it initially. As her hand rested on the catch for the top of the two drawers, she heard sniffling from the other side of her, a weight on the bed.

She turned around slowly, knowing more or less what she would see before she saw it. Jaya Agarwal sat beside her, on her own bed now, her face red-rimmed and puffy as well. Her long hair hung straight around her shoulders and into her face. All at once, Sun realized that it had been her deep-burrowed melancholy that she’d been receiving in waves since walking in the door. 

“There’s tissues on the other side of the bed, if you want,” Agarwal said. Sun shook her head as her eyes connected with those of the woman sitting beside her. She pressed her lips together into a thin line and swallowed heavily before speaking again. “I knew you were coming, but I can’t say I was expecting to see you here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, the first British thing Sun thought of was bulldogs. Because of course it was.


	23. Photo Frame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That was a bad dream,” Sun said as it hit her that she remembered it as something that had caused her to wake up panicked and sweaty weeks ago, some kind of nightmare. “I dreamt that.”
> 
> Agarwal poured out the pale golden tea into the two cups, remaining silent. 
> 
> “I wish that was all it was,” she said, her voice quiet but steady as she set the teapot back down on the table.

A thin slice of sunlight pierced through the shadows of the bedroom, a bright spear falling along the contours of the room that ran from the windowsill almost to the door. The air was uncomfortably still as if too heavy to move. Sun leaned back across the bedspread until she could reach the box of tissues that sat on a matching black filing cabinet on the other side of the bed. Her heart still speeding, she offered it to Agarwal without a word.

Wolfgang appeared in the doorway, his face creased with concern as he watched her holding the box of tissues out to what must look like nothing - a very pointed nothing - to him. She tried to read on his face how much he understood what was happening, and the visiting Agarwal turned towards the door, following Sun’s eyeline towards him.

“You’re not alone, are you?” Agarwal said and Sun thought she saw the corner of her mouth turn up just a little. 

“Am I ever?” Sun said. Agarwal let out a quiet laugh that was almost more of a sob as her eyes fell to her hands, twisting the tissue between them against her lap.

“It’s complicated, isn’t it,” she said, not looking up. “I can’t see him, you know. I wouldn’t have known he was here if you hadn’t looked right at him. I probably could have guessed who it was, though. There was one of that sort in my cluster, too.” Agarwal’s eyes, their deep-set wooden intensity softened but somehow not lessened, rose to meet Sun’s directly in a way that made her shift in her seat to avoid them. “You’re clever and quite the fighter, but you’re not a thief by nature. Quite pointedly not, in fact.”

Sun’s eyes dropped towards the tissue box and she busied herself pulling one out and blowing her own nose. Her eyes scanned the surface of the room quickly. She could no longer see Wolfgang, but she could feel his presence nearby and chose not to look more closely for him. Perhaps he was still in the apartment, perhaps not.

“Not that all thievery is unjustified, I suppose,” she said, reaching past Sun for the small picture frame standing atop the file cabinet, not taking her eyes from the photo as she cradled it with both hands. “I wouldn’t have any of these photos without a certain amount of breaking and entering. But that was- that was different.”

The photo fell back against her lap as her hands relaxed around the frame and Sun finally caught a glimpse of it. A small boy in a smart blue and white-striped polo, maybe three or four years old, pushed a bright, toothy smile back out at her, his skin the same warm mahogany as Agarwal’s. His expression was the broad, unconcerned smile almost unique to very young children. A pair of hands, what looked to be a man’s thick fingers, sat on his shoulders, but the picture was cropped just above the boy’s head. She was fairly certain she’d seen the child in a number of the other photos as she’d come in.

“And what would you call the time you’ve spent in my head?” Sun asked tersely, watching the way Agarwal’s fingers absentmindedly stroked the picture frame. She flipped the photo over against the charcoal skirt pulled tightly across her lap and pursed her lips. Sun felt something tighten in Agarwal’s mind, like it had become a smoothly taut surface as well.

“I’m not being a very good hostess right now, I’m sorry,” Agarwal said, looking back up with a pleasant, brightly businesslike expression that was unsettlingly out of sync with her face, puffy and streaked black with makeup. “There’s really no good reason for us to act so negatively right now. Why don’t we go into the kitchen and I’ll make us some tea.”

As she stood up, smoothing out her skirt and resetting the photo by the bed, Sun looked up at her, confused by how quickly her affect had changed. She wondered if she was still talking to the same person; if one of her clustermates or, she stuttered over the thought, someone else was now speaking with her voice. She quickly flicked the screen of the phone in her pouch to life to see if Kala had passed along information about anyone suspicious making their way towards the apartment, but there was nothing there but the time.

Sun opened her mouth to protest, but Agarwal was already bustling herself out of the room. She cautiously followed her back out into the bright open area that connected the rest of the apartment. 

“Please, have a seat,” she said, gesturing at the small, white table near the window as she clicked on the sleek steel kettle sitting on the kitchen counter. Sun leaned instead on the island that defined the kitchen away from the rest of the room. She could see the door from where she was. Four meters away? Maybe five? It wouldn’t take her very long to make it out of the door and down out of the building.

“You’re free to leave, of course,” Agarwal said, not looking up as she shook some kind of tea into the metal basket of a glass teapot. Her voice rang with a clear but casual authority that sounded much more like the woman Sun had met before. “I should probably get back to work anyway, rather than entertain guests. But we both know you haven’t gotten what you came here for.”

Sun’s lips pressed a thin, tight smile at the cold, black surface of the countertop in front of her. Of course. 

“So what do you want?” Sun asked bluntly as she looked back up.

“Want?” Agarwal asked, making eye contact briefly as she set two white mugs on the other side of the island. “Oh, I just want to chat. I have guests here so rarely, and I think we both have a lot to offer each other.”

“I’m certain you have an explanation about how whatever it is will be mutually beneficial,” Sun said, trying to probe but mostly just reaching steel again. “I’m not the men in your office. If you actually have a proposal to make, you don’t need to dip it in honey first.”

Agarwal paused, hand resting around the handle of the kettle. Her head tilted down towards the counter. She finally lifted the kettle and started to pour the hot water into the teapot.

“I really do have guests here so rarely,” Agarwal repeated sadly, the cheery, professional wrapping on her voice pulled back again as she set the kettle back on its stand. “I promise there are no other motives steeped in with the tea, just tulsi and chamomile,” she said, turning around with the teapot in hand. Delicate golden fingers were starting to stream out from the basket. “Very soothing blend. Uncaffeinated, nothing that might harm the baby. If you’re not planning on running right now, why don’t you come have a seat with me. I’m definitely having some tea. Given the configuration, you might as well enjoy some, too.”

Agarwal stepped out towards the table, gesturing with the tea. “Can you bring the cups over?”

Somewhat perplexed at her own willingness to go along with this, Sun grabbed both mugs in one hand and brought them over to the table where Agarwal had already seated herself. She set the cups down and slid into the seat directly across the table, sitting on the chair’s edge with her back straight, eyes trained alertly on Agarwal. 

She checked the phone in her pouch again, expecting the blank screen this time before she saw it.

“There’s no one else coming,” Agarwal said. “Not that I know of, at least. Certainly not on my instruction. The tea will just be another moment or two steeping.”

“May I ask you a question?” Sun asked, hands resting firmly on her legs.

“You can surely ask,” said Agarwal with a certain tentative caution. 

“Are you working with,” she paused, unclear which name she should use to identify Whispers.

“Him?” Agarwal asked, catching the sneering image of him that had appeared in Sun’s thoughts. She felt the clarity of the thought reflected as Agarwal breathed in, slowly and audibly through her nose. “I suppose you meant what you said about not requiring pleasantries. I wish I had a simpler answer for you around that, but there’s little about him that’s simple.”

 _Barred windows. Cracked tile. The sour smell of standing water on the floor._ The memory surfaced in Agarwal’s mind, coupled with a lingering fear that refused to let Sun fully place it in her own. There was something unsettlingly familiar about it, though that wasn’t uncommon to the memories shared between them. _Whispers, leaning down and extending a hand towards her._

“That was a bad dream,” Sun said as it hit her that she remembered it as something that had caused her to wake up panicked and sweaty weeks ago, some kind of nightmare. “I dreamt that.”

Agarwal poured out the pale golden tea into the two cups, remaining silent. 

“I wish that was all it was,” she said, her voice quiet but steady as she set the teapot back down on the table.

“What did he do to you?” Sun asked, horrified.

“Right then? He got me out,” Agarwal said calmly, handing Sun one of the mugs. “To be quite honest, at that point in time, I didn’t really care whether I lived or died, or where I fell anywhere in between those.”

“The boy in the photos,” Sun said, welcoming the heat against her palms.

“Ankit,” Agarwal supplied, nodding.

“Your son.”

“That’s right.”

“They took him away,” Sun said and Agarwal’s face winced slightly as she nodded, “I remember that from the dream - I was alone. They’d taken the baby away, and I didn’t even remember them being born. They’d taken everyone away.”

“It’s interesting how deeply those memories can embed themselves without you knowing,” Agarwal said and took a sip of her tea.

“That actually happened to you,” Sun said, her voice chilled with disbelief.

“There are worse things than dying,” she said flatly, and the warmth of her eyes seemed to harden several shades towards stone as she spoke. She had woken up from that dream shaken in a way that no dream had until the night she had first seen Agarwal visit her bedroom in Nairobi. Even that had evoked a different, more practical kind of unease. It hadn’t been enough, then, for Capheus to wrap himself around her to calm the visceral fear, the horrifying silence of that dream. Wolfgang, Kala, Lito, Nomi, even Riley: in teams and turns they had all manifested there to sit with her, to lie beside her, to touch her, to remind her that they hadn’t disappeared. Dreams like that - or, at least, wakenings like that - tended not to go unnoticed as they reverberated in whatever way they did between them. 

The line between dreams and received memories - it felt as though she could work at it forever without fully pulling apart the two, especially given how much more intense all of her dreams had become over the last several months. To imagine that how many of those dreams may not have been dreams at all was almost overwhelming.

“Your,” Sun began, but stopped herself. “You were alone. Really alone. Where were...”

“You still see this as something of a gift, don’t you?” Agarwal interrupted, her calm in saying so laced with a casual condescension that made Sun sit up just that much straighter on the edge of her seat.

“It is what it is,” Sun said, trying to collect evenness into her voice. “In truth, my life was going through significant change even without this at the time.”

She sipped her tea slowly as she looked across the table. Her cluster. Any thoughts about them - what thoughts there were - seemed to slip away when she came near them. Whispers, himself, had come to get her out of the horrible silence of that nightmare place. Despite the barred windows, she was fairly certain it was not a jail, but she couldn’t say why. Perhaps all she was clear about was that it wasn’t the jail where she had been. The stench of the sour water seemed inescapable, like it would work its way into the skin, never to be fully removed. 

“How long ago did you first...” Sun asked.

“Oh, six, seven years,” she said. “Ankit was nearly three when I first started having these episodes.”

“Do you remember the first thing you saw?” Sun asked.

“Oh, yes, very well. A cow. It nearly,” Agarwal said, her face twisting slightly as she tried to grasp for polite words. Sun thought she saw the edge of a smile trying to break on her face around it as she caught a glimpse of the memory of the giant, rust-brown backside of a cow, tail lifted high, against the backdrop of a well-kept apartment. “It very nearly defecated on me. I had to pull Ankit out from under it. It’s rather hard to forget a moment like that. You?”

“There was a chicken on my desk at work” Sun said. Her face cracked open warmly at the memory and she was satisfied to see Agarwal’s expression open just a tiny bit more, but it was paired with a twist of pain deep within her, that she didn’t expect.

“And how long ago was that? It’s a fairly recent development for you, no? The last year?” 

“June,” she said, “It’s been six months.”

“That recently?” Agarwal said with a polite surprise. 

“It seems like it should be far longer, but then, it also seems like just a few days ago that I had no idea why there was a chicken on my desk.”

Agarwal’s laugh surprised her. Not simply the fact of it, but the warm, birdlike tone of it, almost chirping, the way that a child laughs. She smiled once she had recovered from the initial surprise of it, laughing quietly to herself.

“Who was the first of your cluster that you spoke with?” Agarwal asked. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t pry like that. You probably don’t trust me with information about them under the circumstances. I can’t say I blame you.”

“No, I don’t think this compromises anything. You know plenty about him already, I’m sure.”

“Oh, really?” Agarwal asked with a smirk. “Him? Was it love at first sight?”

“I may be the least likely person to buy into an idea like that,” Sun said, but found herself smiling. “Actually, I told him then that I would prefer to keep thinking of him as something my mind had invented.”

Agarwal laughed again, “Do you still tell him that?”

“Ah, no,” Sun said. “What about you? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“No, not at all,” Agarwal sighed. “Beginnings are easy. I was on the pitch at a football game in Australia, and one of the officials was very confused. He started whistling to get me off the field. It caused quite a commotion.”

Something in the back of Sun’s head whispered that there was another story she wasn’t telling. That this had been a first, but not the first. Agarwal’s eyes met hers but darted away quickly. 

The memory that she had come in here for notebooks hit her again suddenly and her face stiffly quieted itself. Right then, it almost seemed more distant than the memory of the chicken on the desk. The apartment had seemed something of a black box walking into it, as the building itself had, as even the city itself had upon arrival, each opaque box nested inside the next. Agarwal’s pleasant laugh seemed to echo starkly around the safe locked inside her.

Like thoughts of her cluster, the words to even ask about them staunchly eluded her. She wasn’t sure if she had developed that fine a control over her conscious thoughts, if the block in consciousness was somehow on her own part or, perhaps, if there were some other factor in play. But something in there had spurred the sadness Sun had felt almost upon entering, and something had brought Agarwal, with all the strength and composure of her professional demeanor, to her in tears.

The barred windows reasserted themselves in her memory and she took another sip of her tea, rolling the warm, herbal sweetness around her mouth. She cradled the heavy warmth of the cup in both hands as she tried to piece together something that was more than small talk.

“The place with the bars.” Sun finally asked. “Where were you?”

“You’re so lucky your husband is also one of us,” Agarwal said. The expression that had relaxed onto her face had tightened into plastic again and Sun cursed mildly in her mind.

“He’s not my husband, but I suppose I don’t disagree,” Sun said.

“He wouldn’t marry you, even in your condition? It is his child, is it not?”

“Actually, I was the one who wouldn’t marry him. He did suggest it,” Sun said. “That’s a more complex issue. But you’re avoiding my question. If you want to refuse to answer it, that’s fine, but I’d prefer you say so directly.”

Agarwal pressed her lips together, fingers tapping on the side of the cup as her eyes turned away, out the window.

“No,” she said, and sighed, “I think it’s important not to ignore stories like these, to know the kind of dangers that we face. Where I was - what you saw - it was a mental institution. My husband had me committed because of my,” she paused, and Sun could feel her mind working to stay collected, “because of this.”

“You said he got you out,” Sun said, the thought of it creeping through her veins like poisoned ice. “Isn’t a place like that usually a temporary situation?”

“Let’s be clear - no one there was going to help me get better from this. But even if they could have cured me, that’s not how it works here,” she sighed. “Rajeev - he expected to put me there to forget about me. He served me divorce papers there and I found out later that he told my son - our son - that I was dead. That I had gotten a horrible illness and died in the hospital.”

Sun thought she was going to be sick. “But how could he,” she began, setting her cup down on the table.

“I don’t know, maybe it was the right decision on his part. There were some very difficult times early on. Things I couldn’t hide, that I don’t know that I could hide even now,” she said. “It must have been very frightening for both of them.”

“But, to abandon you there,” Sun said.

“I’m not saying I forgive him for that. That, I don’t think I can do,” she said, setting her tea gently on the table, the hollow rasp of ceramic against enamel grating as the cup rotated against the table. “No.” Sun could feel her working hard to calm herself, to still her memory. She found herself with one hand in a fist, the other hand massaging the clenched knuckles as her stomach churned with disgust, since it seemed disbelief was not an option.

“What do you do with that?” The words burst out of her mouth before she could reconsider them. Tiny twitches in Agarwal’s face belied how hard she was working to hold herself together, and the tears rose hot in Sun’s own eyes as she pressed harder against the individual contours of her fist.

“Survive, I suppose,” Agarwal finally sighed out. “It may be the greatest insult to someone who wants to imagine you don’t exist. Especially if they want to wash their hands of any guilt in it. It’s not always the easiest course to take, though. I don’t know, maybe that’s rationalization on some level.”

She knew should have had something soothing ready to say, but she didn’t, just her fingers clenched under the table. Her father’s face came to mind, her brother’s trying to push it out of the way, as if they themselves were contradictory opinions. Agarwal’s face twitched into a sad, thin sort of smile of recognition at her.

“When he came to get you out, what deal did he offer you?” Sun asked cautiously and Agarwal exhaled heavily again.

“A normal life again,” She laughed with a bitter bleakness under her breath. “To be free of all this excess clutter in my mind. You know, it was charming at first, but when has it ever really done me any practical favors?”

“What did he want in return?” Sun asked, queasy with the flippant way she seemed to dismiss her connections.

“He wanted more or less the same thing I wanted, assuming he couldn’t give me my family back. He wanted me to have a regular life and to be successful in my profession.”

“And information, I assume.”

“Well, yes, but I don’t think it’s quite what you fear. He pulled a few strings to put me in line for this job at Innovations and all he really wants is for me to look at some research and records for him every now and again.”

“But the rest of your cluster, they must be,” Sun began.

“There is no rest of my cluster anymore,” she interrupted with an unsettling calm, setting her cup on the table and refilling it. “There hasn’t been for some time now. More tea?” 

Sun set her cup down on the table in shock. She didn’t even want to try to stretch her mind around what that would be like to not have them all there, much less to imagine harm coming to them.

“So you just let him,” she said.

“Let me be perfectly clear; I sacrificed no one,” Agarwal’s voice had begun to simmer in a way Sun had never heard from her. “Most of them were gone by the time he came to me. By that point, it had been almost three years since our cluster had become active and nearly two of those years I had been stuck in that place. What he did was not a mystery to me. When he came, I hoped at first he had come to make me one of his pickled cauliflowers.”

“I think I need to go now,” Sun said, swallowing hard as she stood up, cold, still almost nauseous with the thought of it. Agarwal stood up across the table from her, lips pressed into a thin line as she rested her fingers on the smooth, white surface of the table. One finger tapped nervously against the table.

“Very well, then,” she said, and exhaled heavily through her nose, eyes searching the floor idly. “Did you want those notes?” she asked, eyes raising back up. “You bothered to come all the way here for them.”

“I, sure, I suppose,” Sun sputtered, surprised. “But don’t you need those? I mean, is it going to cause you trouble to give them up?”

“No,” Agarwal said, standing up from the table and smoothing her skirt out again and walking back towards the bedroom. “No one’s expecting them now.”

“But, then,” Sun set her eyes across the room at a potted ficus that had been sitting behind the other chair, as if demanding an answer from the plant. “Why do you? Did you?”

“Will you come for tea again sometime?” Agarwal asked, walking back in and dropping a pair of yellow legal pads on the table in front of her. “I don’t know how long you’re in Mumbai - you may not either - but I, it was good to actually talk about some of this.”

“I really can’t say, “ Sun said, blindsided by the request.

“Look, here’s my phone number,” she said, grabbing a pen from a drawer in the island and scrawling out the digits on the top leaf of the notepad.

Clutching the notepads to her chest, she pulled the door shut gently behind her, as if trying to close it without making a sound. In truth, she had very little awareness of her surroundings as she rested back against the door and slid numbly to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Actually, tulsi and chamomile tea is the shit.
> 
> Also, thanks yet again to PreRaphaelites for keeping me honest and on point.


	24. Blue Ink, Blue Sheets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you expecting to find something different in them this time?” he asked as their eyes met and she turned to face him with a somewhat sour grunt. “Sorry, am I intruding?”
> 
> She shrugged and felt him settle in behind her on the bed, his fingers tracing a lazy circuit on the exposed curve of her belly where her light tee shirt was pushed up against the sun-warmed blue cotton of the sheets.
> 
> “I still don’t know what she wants from me,” she said, ignoring the latter question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this took goddamn long enough. Sorry, y'all, a couple of big things have been eating my time and my brain for the last few months, and there's enough balls up in the air with this one that it felt like a bad idea to push some plot I wasn't satisfied with. Here's a chapter that is mostly some fluffy smut, just to ease us all (but especially me) back into this piece.

Kala rushed over from her post by the plant, her hand on Sun’s shoulder almost as soon as she reached the ground. Sun shivered reflexively, eyes set on some point far beyond the textured burgundy of the wall in front of her, glassy and distant. 

“Are you alright?” Kala whispered nervously, her other hand patting Sun’s cheek and forehead as if feeling for a fever. “What happened in there?”

Sun’s head tracked numbly, almost weightless towards Kala through the dull hum in her head. Though her words failed her in explaining, as their eyes fell into focus together, Kala felt something of the same weight that had pulled Sun to the ground grab heavily at her chest. She teetered forward onto her knees from where she had squatted down next to Sun on the carpet.

“We should go,” Kala said with a pained sigh, her hand resting on Sun’s against the floor, breaking through the chill that had washed over Sun as she left the apartment. Agarwal’s words bounced in a chaotic jumble in her head, the sense of them more than the precise substance.

_There is no rest of my cluster anymore. He put me there to forget about me. He told our son I was dead. There is little about him that is simple. I sacrificed no one._

_You still think this is a gift._

Her eyes slid shut and she inhaled slowly, trying to regain control over the nervous twists in her body. As she exhaled, she finally pushed herself up from the floor, still clutching the notepads to her side. Kala put an arm around her as she led her back to the elevator. 

The city unfolded in front of her as they sat in the cab, Sun’s face resting against the cool glass of the window as she let herself take in her surroundings the way she wouldn’t let herself before. Agarwal already knew what her own city looked like. For the moment, at least, there was no way of erasing at least the thought of her from the back of her mind. She and Kala were silent between each other as the radio squawked animatedly. The notepads still sat, undisturbed, in her lap. 

Her fingers idly traced the edge of one of the legal pads, thumb flipping along the corner, but she couldn’t bring herself to actually focus on them. A wave of exhaustion washed through her as she looked over at Kala again. Kala offered her a small smile, weak but generous, and Sun’s eyes drifted closed again as she relaxed as much as she could into the seat.

* * *

The light coming through the window hugged Sun’s form, curled in her bed at Kala’s around the notepads she had brought back from Jaya Agarwal’s apartment just days ago. Had it been that little time? The time since she had left Nairobi seemed to collapse on itself in improbable, conflicting ways.

She breathed the humid stillness of the room. She had opted out of the museum trip the others had gone on, citing exhaustion, but she really had just wanted some time to herself, for whatever that was worth these days. She had watched the polite lie roll off of Kala’s and Capheus’s faces, knowing they could see plainly that it was bullshit. But then again, in the same turn, they could see the grain of truth underneath the excuse as well and let her be. It was a kind of exhaustion, she supposed.

The phone number stared at her from the top of a page, scrawled in blue ink. The pages themselves held little of interest: logs of names she already knew, brief physical descriptions of her various clustermates, a few broadly sketched out details about locations. She had ultimately found herself most drawn to the abstract arrangements of dots and swirls that Agarwal had doodled in the margins and corners of most pages.

There was something about the notes that felt unsatisfying, but she couldn’t speak to precisely what it was, unsure what she had been expecting beyond the concrete details neatly outlined in front of her. A reorganization into a more comprehensive profile of herself, perhaps. Some kind of perspective or guidance that could help her feel like she had an absolute direction. The prescience in the way the woman had spoken to her - about her - when they were face to face the other day had largely been uncomfortable but almost intriguingly so. But that seemed to be the contrast of everything she had to say. It certainly characterized the stories she had to tell about herself.

The light cut onto the numbers as it fell across her shoulder. Was she really thinking of calling her up to set up another meeting? 

Before she could entertain the thought further, she felt the light touch of fingers dance up the back of her leg. The feeling vibrated deeper within her as she rolled over to Capheus sitting on the side of the bed.

“Are you expecting to find something different in them this time?” he asked as their eyes met and she turned to face him with a somewhat sour grunt. “Sorry, am I intruding?”

She shrugged and felt him settle in behind her on the bed, his fingers tracing a lazy circuit on the exposed curve of her belly where her light tee shirt was pushed up against the sun-warmed blue cotton of the sheets.

“I still don’t know what she wants from me,” she said, ignoring the latter question.

“You know, I’ve said this before, but it’s possible that she doesn’t have any more of a complete answer to that question than you do right now,” he said. She grimaced in acknowledgement as she wriggled against him, turning onto her back to look up at him.

“I just thought I’d get more to go on - that we’d have a clearer picture of where we all stood after this,” she said. His eyes were serious and thoughtful as he looked at her, his hand stopping in its movement to rest open and warm against her skin.

“You can’t always be in control of everything,” he said.

“I’m not trying to be in control of it, I just want to know what there is that I can do,” she said, tucking her hands behind her head. 

“I know,” he said. 

“I’m tired of this,” she said.

“I know,” he repeated, the tone in his voice unchanged. What else was he supposed to say? 

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m particularly good company right now,” she said.

“You say that too much,” he smiled at her, pulling her a little closer and planting a gentle kiss against her collarbone. “You must be careful or I might start believing it.” She sighed: once, softly, in relief at his touch and once more in frustration at her own unease despite the warmth of his presence. A deep breath later, her hand guided him in to kiss her again, feeling the tension held in her body dissolve just a little more against his lips. “But I highly doubt it,” he grinned against the skin of her neck and a tiny smile crept up one side of her face.

The sunlight fell across the warm richness of his skin as she opened her eyes again. Her mind drifted back to Agarwal, and she wondered if her husband had made her feel at ease like this. She still worried sometimes that the softness she fell into around Capheus robbed her of the alert edge that had always fed her sense of security. 

It had happened that way with Byung-ho, too, though: she had bared herself before him in ways she sometimes didn’t even understand until it had already happened, until weakness had turned into pain. In ways he probably didn’t recognize had done that to her, before or after the fact. In some ways, that had been the problem.

The fullness of his lips pressing against the base of her neck pulled her back from that thought, though, reminding her yet again of how much distance lay between the two men. Capheus’s words always carried a lilt of sincerity, but somehow the touch of his lips on her skin spoke the same thing with greater conviction, as if language in any form could never match the immediacy and honesty of his touch. 

Her exhale vibrated with a gentle hum as he delicately kissed his way across the length of her collarbone, fingertips trailing over from her belly to trace and retrace the exposed curve of her hip. Her shoulders sank deeper into the bed as her chest pushed gently up into him. She wrapped her arms around him to pull him closer against her when the thought hit her.

“Aren’t you still at the art museum right now? With your mother?” She asked with a slightly confused grin. He chuckled against her neck before looking up at her and she found herself sprawled across his lap where he was seated on a wooden bench, surrounded by classical sculptures in different muted colors of stone.

“Well,” he said, turning his gaze away from her and scratching behind his ear. Across the room, Shiro stood in front of a stone figure Sun couldn’t quite make out, hands folded thoughtfully in front of her. Kala came into view from behind a different statue, her eyes flicking across the room to the two of them on the bench before stepping in next to Shiro and beginning to talk with her.

She watched as his eyes searched the room, settling on the sign by the door pointing the way towards the bathrooms. He stood up from the bench and kissed her forehead softly. 

“Just give me a moment here,” he whispered against her ear. As she sat up, her eyes met the warm peach of the walls of her room at Kala’s again. The notepads lay out on the bed where she had left them in a still-sunny patch on the bed. One arm wrapped protectively around her knees, the fingers on her other hand traced over the blue numbers at the top again as she looked at them, like the numbers themselves were a question demanding an answer.

She felt his lips against the skin of her neck, just behind her ear, before she realized he was with her again.

“I hope I didn’t startle you,” he said softly as she relaxed into his touch, body uncurling so his hand could retake its position resting against her hip. His thumb brushing lightly over the warm tone of her skin, electric current trickling across her skin towards her core, she realized they hadn’t really had any time to themselves since they had arrived in Mumbai. As she reached up to cup his cheek she felt him read the thought in her eyes and smile softly as he echoed it back, letting himself be drawn into her kiss, long and slow. His shoes plopped to the floor as he toed them off and his own hand rose from her hip to slide in behind her head as he settled himself alongside her on the bed. The tip of her tongue traced the seam of his lips, and was met by his own sliding its way against hers, a hint of ginger and cardamom lingering on his tongue from his morning tea. She barely noticed as the notes were pushed to the floor, and couldn’t quite bring herself to care that they had been.

“Maybe I should have stayed home from the museum as well,” he said softly. “I’ve missed getting to spend time with just you like this.”

Sun surprised herself with the giggle that ran through her, rolling in towards him and burying her face in the crook of his neck as she laughed. It seemed to surprise him as well, sliding his arm around her waist to pull her a little tighter against him, his nose buried in her dark hair where he breathed deeply.

“You know your mother wouldn’t let that pass,” Sun mumbled into his chest. “Not quietly, at least.”

“That is true,” he said through a low chuckle.

“I don’t know if it would be worse if Kala’s parents were horrified by how, ah, open she can be on our behalf or if they weren’t,” Sun said and Capheus’s quiet chuckle bloomed into fully-fledged laughter that tangled between the lines of their bodies on the bed.

He kissed into her smile, broad and open, his fingers beginning to trace featherlight patterns into her skin again. She slipped her hand under the soft cotton hem of his shirt to trace the contours of his back. The dull ache at her core began to pulse gently as his lips began to press a damp trail across her chest, pulling gently at her shirt to expose more of her skin above the neckline.

She pressed herself back up to sitting. He followed with a slight look of concern, but which melted instantly as she quickly tugged her shirt over her head, her eyes leaving his only for the brief moment when the fabric crossed in front of them. His hands ran lightly up over her chest, over the beaded nipples that had grown so sensitive of late, as he leaned in to press his hungry mouth to hers again. She reached in to start unbuttoning the small, dark buttons on his shirt, but he pressed her hands together against his chest.

“There’s only so much of a mess I want to make at the museum right now. Why don’t you just let me take care of you right now,” he said, his voice, his warm breath a velvet hum against her ear. 

His face pulled back just far enough that they could look each other in the eye. It was a strange way for him to phrase that, she thought, and for a moment she searched his eyes for evidence of anyone else sharing the space behind them. All she could find was the softness, the open admiration of a gaze that was all his. It was almost unbearable sometimes, as she could feel the edges of it bleeding over into her mind, and she worried about the work it would take to be half of what he saw in her. Where his hands touched hers she felt the desire cycle through their skin like a current. She breathed deeply and relaxed her forehead in against his as she exhaled.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said as her hands relaxed against his chest, where his own took up the task of undoing each of the buttons. His eyes held contact with hers the whole time, his mouth settled into a soft, sly smile until his hands were free again and he reached up to pull her face into his. As they kissed, her fingers worked their way under the hem of the undershirt that still hung close on his body, dragging the ribbed fabric lightly up his sides until it was bunching at his shoulder blades. He pulled back from the kiss and tugged the shirt the rest of the way over his head. He dropped it carelessly beside him as he leaned forward into her, mouthing gently down the hollow of her throat as she settled onto her back in the bed. Her vocal cords vibrated against his lips as a satisfied sound escaped her throat. His lips continued across her chest to swirl a nipple gently into his mouth, grinning against her as she gasped when his teeth grazed the tender skin, her fingers digging into the muscles of his back as his tongue lazily circled the area and he repeated the action.

Even after months of being together like this, she still sometimes marveled at his attentiveness, as if he could dedicate every scrap of his awareness to feeling out her responses, making tiny adjustments in the pressure of his movement, the speed of his touch as she shivered like liquid inside her skin and moaned against him. Only part of it, she suspected, came from the way he could feel her sensations as his own. He always had a sense of people, reading them the way Sun would read a table of figures even more than the way she would read an opponent in the ring, though the two were not entirely dissimilar.

She wrapped her legs around him firmly to anchor him as she curled up to work her teeth and tongue gently against the shell of his ear. Almost as much as she enjoyed his concentration, she enjoyed trying to push the edges of it, working through the tangle of their bodies to stroke or bite just so that he would collapse, boneless, into her skin.

His breath ghosted into the space between her breasts, falling cool across the damp nipple and he set his hands against her shoulders.

“Love, I need to keep wearing these pants for another several hours,” he said, his voice rich and breathy against her skin. “They’re going to get uncomfortable if you keep that up right now. I know it seems like a strange request - I almost can’t believe that I’m saying this, except that I am - but, please, hold that thought for later.”

She looked down at him, the sunlight revealing the warmest mahogany tones in his skin, his dark eyes blissfully wide as he looked up at her from where he had rested his head against her chest. From the look on his face, it seemed clear that his request was going to be difficult to hold up even if she kept her hands off of him for the rest of his visit. The thought curled her lips into a tiny, smug smile as she lay back against the sheets, wordlessly resting her hands under her head.

His eyes slid shut as he took a deep breath against her skin and she could feel his muscles relax, his resolve tightening like the aching want deep inside her. His shoulders rose and fell heavily once more with his breath and his eyes flicked open again, meeting hers with purpose before his gaze fell to her skin once more. Her hips twitched to rise up into him as he kissed along her belly, his hands sliding up her legs into her soft cotton underwear, his thick fingers spreading across her ass to support her there.

“Close your ears, little bean,” he whispered into her skin as his face hovered just below her navel, and his eyes flashed playfully up at Sun’s face. “You know how eomma can get at times like these.”

Sun could feel the blush of embarrassment rising under the heat of arousal as the two of them collapsed together laughing. She had more or less gotten used to Capheus talking to her belly now and again, almost as if she were hearing one side of a telephone conversation. She couldn’t always tease out how much was just for the pleasure of watching her roll her eyes and laugh at him and how much of it was him genuinely trying to make a connection with the wriggling little eel growing inside of her. 

“You’re going to do that now?” She asked, frustrated at the way he had cut through the heady buzz they had already built up, though if she was honest, it hadn’t actually cut through it that much. Her skin burned with anticipation where his hands were spread across it, holding her hips up towards him, fingers hooked over the waistband of her underpants.

“No, I’m about done with that,” he said and ran his tongue in a long, wet stripe across her skin right where the waistband met her skin and the heat inside of her tightened almost unbearably, aching for his touch. He hummed as he kissed softly over the cotton clinging damply to her folds and her eyes rolled and fluttered at the vibrations against her. She resisted the urge again to stroke his head, to tease at his ears. Instead she brought her fingers to her mouth and bit down on a few of them as his tongue flicked lightly against her, once, twice - she was going to smack him if he didn’t move past that fabric soon - and pushed her hips up towards him.

He chuckled low against her almost in direct response to her thoughts, hands finally peeling the garment down away from her and dropping it carelessly to the side. He inhaled the scent of her and sat back on his heels where he perched beside her, laid bare against the pale blue sheets. He looked over her with the kind of quiet, sincere smile that held her together when she felt like every other part of her was coming undone. His hands resting on his thighs, she watched his chest rise and fall deeply several times as he looked at her, trying to still the ache that also pulsed through him.

The few moments in absence of his touch were almost excruciating, but then he leaned forward onto his arm beside her and brought a finger to her lips without breaking eye contact. He seemed to think better of it as her tongue snaked out to pull it into her mouth, and with a soft gasp brought it to his own lips instead, pulling it into his mouth like he’d burned it.

With his wet finger he stroked around the slickness of her in slow, teasing passes, each one pulling a sharp breath from her as she shifted in place. _Hold that thought for later_ , indeed. It would be a wonder if he didn’t come just from the thoughts this was making her hold in her head for later of all the ways she could drag this out of him as well. It would almost be a wonder if she didn’t.

Any thought wiped itself clear of her mind as his tongue finally touched her with nothing to interfere, putting aside the infuriatingly soft touches that had been tracing out the edges of her pleasure and curling the soft flat of his tongue against her, sucking her in gently. Unbidden, her body arched in a wave as she gripped into the bedding, a light, whining moan sneaking out with every breath.

Breathing hard, she managed to tuck her elbows under her to prop herself up just enough to see him where he knelt between her legs, one hand gently massaging the fleshiest part of her thigh. He peeked up at her through the haze of his eyelashes and ran his tongue in tight circle around her swollen clit. Eyes locked together, she could almost taste her own musky tartness in her mouth.

Two fingers slipped into her just out of her sight, curling and twisting into her in vague syncopation with his mouth as it continued to flicker soft, wet patterns of lines and pressure against her. The ball of tension sitting low in her core grew like a fire that licked throughout her body, a slippery ache just under her skin, only to return there, back to the center. With each pull and stroke of his tongue, each crook and push of his fingers, it wasn’t long until she felt herself burst into the temporary blankness of pleasure as she shuddered and tightened against him, around him. 

As she sank back into the bed, deeper into it than she thought possible, she realized he wasn’t there. She pushed herself up to sitting, looking around the room for any sign of him but even the clothes he had shed here appeared to be gone from the floor. It wasn’t like him to disappear like this. Even early on, when they had only seen each other through their connection and he had to rush to get back to work, he always let her know before leaving her be. A particularly strong aftershock coursed through her, eyes rolling back as her body shivered with phantom pleasure again. She almost said his name aloud before realizing it wouldn’t do any good. She would know if something had happened to him, though, wouldn’t she?

A moment later, the weight of him settled alongside her and he began tracing light, lazy lines with his fingers along the length of her body. She relaxed back against the bed again.

“What was that about?” She asked, looking the short distance up at him with a puzzled look. “Where were you?”

“Oh, ah,” he said, his mouth quirking into a bashful smile, his hand resting open on her belly, “I just needed to take care of something for a moment. It was quick, but urgent.”

“What could,” she began, about to ask what could be so urgent right then, but then she thought back to how intense that aftershock had been and realized it answered the question better than anything he was going to tell her right then. She found herself laughing under her breath, loose and boneless in her body again, at the thought of it.

“I see,” she said, voiced tempered with bemusement. “Everything’s alright now?”

“Almost entirely,” he said, leaning in to kiss her again. “But I should probably go. They’ll wonder where I’ve gotten to. Or, er,” he shrugged bashfully. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

The sun kept the bed warm after he left. Sun lay there, not bothering to put any clothes back on for a while. At some point, she noticed the notepads splayed out on the floor where they had been knocked off the bed without ceremony. They could stay there for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update 25 Jan 2018: Hey, loves. This story has been on unofficial hiatus since S2 dropped and I had Things to reconsider and integrate. That said, I had some stuff happen personally that means that I'm not going to be emotionally ready to work on this again for a while so I think I need to officially call it on hiatus. This story still means a whole hell of a lot to me - it wouldn't be difficult if it didn't - and I love to see that it's still catching people. I want to give it the continuation it deserves and I will when I'm ready (unlike SOME *cough* netflix *cough*).


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